Holy grail or another false start for identity

2010-03-04 Colin Henderson

Something that is holding up ecommerce and development of serious commercial actiivty online is the matter of identity. There are many proposed solutions but the fact remains that they are disparate and all fail in the sense that you cannot have one identity online and choose which parts to share with those sites you visit. So at first glance this identity exchange proposed by Paypal, Google and Equifax has merit. the involvement of Equifax is key because they are a repository of personal information which is known in total only to the person. PayPal, Google and Equifax back launch of … Continue reading Holy grail or another false start for identity

Uncategorized3 Comments

Social media is more complicated than “ do it” now

2010-02-22 Colin Henderson

This kind of post drives me nuts. Datamonitor release a press release announcing that banks need to take social media seriously. This is a headline from 2006. Banks need to start taking social media seriously – Datamonitor Anna Large, analyst, Datamonitor, says: "Banks have adopted a "bury-their-heads -in-the-sand" approach to the part social media could play in both retaining and obtaining customers. At the heart of this is the idea that social media is just a fad, that consumers are essentially non-committal. However, the fact that 50% of UK consumers are using online tools to make their financial decisions indicates … Continue reading Social media is more complicated than “ do it” now

Economy

To exit or not to exit; that is the question

2010-02-202010-02-20 Colin Henderson

There is a fascinating debate raging amongst some of the best known economists. The debate is specific to the UK economy but when you note the number of Americans involved you can rest assured this is equally applicable to US. The debate began with the case for belt tightening from 20 economists: UK economy cries out for credible rescue plan | The Times IT IS now clear that the UK economy entered the recession with a large structural budget deficit. As a result the UK’s budget deficit is now the largest in our peacetime history and among the largest in … Continue reading To exit or not to exit; that is the question

Self Service

A perfect example of customer loyalty | WordPress outage

2010-02-19 Colin Henderson

A key driver of customer loyalty is customer service, especially in the handling of crises and problems. But there are other aspects. WordPress for those that are not familiar, is a blogging platform. This blog is running on WordPress. Yesterday, late afternoon, WordPress was down for 110 minutes. On the face of it this would be a crisis. For example when gmail goes down, even for 2 minutes, everyone panics, predicts the end cloud computing, reflects on how this proves you cannot trust Google etc. etc. When wordpress goes down, here is the result. WP.com Downtime Summary Jean-Luc Crucifix February … Continue reading A perfect example of customer loyalty | WordPress outage

Uncategorized

How banks misread risk

2010-02-152010-02-15 Colin Henderson

http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=f3bb24bf00b55a124ac079d7f5d235bbe999f947&rf=bm Continue reading How banks misread risk

US1 Comment

The debt glut and risk to banks

2010-02-142010-02-15 Colin Henderson

The survivability of banks generally is todays topic. The Greek situation has one possible outcome of contagion across numerous aspects with potential for another economic crisis, despite the cries from many that the crisis is over. This week Brad de Long took issue with Niall Fergusons recent piece (A Greek crisis is coming to America) wherein Niall highlighted the international country debt crisis was not just Greece, Portugal and Spain, but included the US. He is one of many US commentators who are becoming increasingly shrill against Niall and others even raising his personal life style as a means to … Continue reading The debt glut and risk to banks

Uncategorized

IBM and BBA look at banks; restoring loyalty and trust

2010-02-08 Colin Henderson

The British banking system has changed beyond all recognition. It was not a difficult prediction that I concluded last year, but it has come to be sooner than even I thought. RESTORING LOYALTY, TRUST AND INDUSTRY PROFITABILITY | IBM / BBA Hand-in-hand with this increase in consolidation and government ownership, we have also seen a major new entrant arrive – Banco Santander now has over 1,300 branches through its acquisition of Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley – and non-banking groups flexing their muscles in the banking space. Tesco Bank has now exited from its joint venture … Continue reading IBM and BBA look at banks; restoring loyalty and trust

Global risks that affect everything for years to come

2010-02-04 Colin Henderson

McKinsey provided a list here of the latest risk assessments done by three groups. I had the WEF one already, so its was interesting to review and compare the three. World Economic Forum Global Risks 2010 (In collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Thought Leadership group) Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest global business risk assessment Eurasia Group, Top Risks and Red Herrings for 2010 Relevance to Bankwatch: This is a sobering list (see below for complete table of contents of all three. The news today is full of: Greece, Portugal and Spain country risk problems government debt, particularly US, UK and Japan consumer … Continue reading Global risks that affect everything for years to come

Canada8 Comments

CIBC release first Canadian bank iphone app

2010-02-022010-02-02 Colin Henderson

It was October 2009 when I posted ‘who will be the last bank without an iphone app’. For Canada I should have said who will be first, and its been a long time coming but it is CIBC. After an initial delay in December, it is released today. No bill payment yet, but it does have EMT (Canadian p2p payments between participating banks). Kudos to CIBC. Technorati Tags: cibc,iphone,app,app store Continue reading CIBC release first Canadian bank iphone app