WAMU strategy to move back-office jobs to lower-cost locations


Those locations are a mix of foreign, and US.  Washington Mutual Fires 1,400 Call Center Workers – – Donahoe-Wilmot said the layoffs were “part of our strategy announced last year to move back-office jobs to lower-cost locations.” In November, the company said it planned to increase the number of offshore jobs from about 1,600 then to about 6,000 by the end of 2007, she said. However this is all consistent with Washington Mutual earlier announcement. In November, the company said it planned to increase the number of offshore jobs from about 1,600 then to about 6,000 by the end of … Continue reading WAMU strategy to move back-office jobs to lower-cost locations

Barclays provide smart alert service


This is a highly useful and relevant alert service, allowing customers to keep track of changes to the fraud sensitive bill registration area. Barclays extra fraud protection | This is Money They will also offer customers a free service which will send them a text message every time a new payment is set up from their account. ‘If a recipient is not on our recognised list of financial providers, credit card companies and the like, we will send the customer a text message to tell them a new payment has been set up,’ a spokesman told This is Money. Technorati … Continue reading Barclays provide smart alert service

The future for Instore services is not clear


This is a seismic shift in consumer attitudes against In-store diversification in grocery stores.  It could be that in 2002, consumers saw it as newer, but are not getting tired of it.  51% of consumers want supermarkets to focus on food Although the percentage of respondents buying or using none of the suggested products or services was significantly lower in 2006 than in 2002, the percentage of those who held the opinion that supermarkets should concentrate on their food offering had dramatically increased over the same period (51.3% of respondents in 2006, compared with 24% in 2002). Continue reading The future for Instore services is not clear

Harris Bank selects CSC and Viewpointe for electronic imaging


Viewpointe is the largest image archive in the US. Finextra: Harris Bank selects CSC and Viewpointe for electronic imaging (2004) Harris Bank selects CSC and Viewpointe for electronic imaging Harris Bank, part of the BMO Financial Group, has signed a multi-year agreement to utilise Viewpointe and CSC electronic imaging systems. In more recent news, Viewpointe have contracted with IBM has signed a five-year, $174 million deal with IBM for the development of a new national cheque image archive. All the big banks in the US are users. The deal calls for IBM – which is also a minority owner in … Continue reading Harris Bank selects CSC and Viewpointe for electronic imaging

Remarks delivered by Franklin D. Raines, Chairman and CEO, Fannie Mae, June 12, 2001


Found this old speech from the 2001 Forrester Forum.  Interesting to contrast, and see how far the industry has come, yet still the big banks have a long way to go.

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Fannie Mae

Let me thank Forrester Research for helping investors to understand the New Economy and the fact that a company can be a winner even if it happens to make money.

I appreciate the opportunity to show how a Fortune 50 financial services company like Fannie Mae can harness the technology of the New Economy to be a leader in what we call the Permanent Economy. In fact, let me report today that Internet Week magazine has just named Fannie Mae their “E-Business of the Year in Financial Services.” As the magazine said, “Fannie Mae has almost overnight become one of the nation’s premier e-businesses.”  If you’re wondering how a 63-year-old company in the secondary mortgage market became an E-Business success, we did it by embracing two key trends.

First we fully embraced what Forrester calls “open finance.” As Forrester has pointed out, the trend in financial services is that large-scale, strongly branded firms will collect and offer their consumers the best financial products available anywhere in the market — the best credit card, the best insurance, the best mutual fund, the best mortgage. Not just the in-house brand, but the best product available. And the winners in this trend will be financial companies that specialize either in making the products, or distributing them. They won’t try to do it all.

Continue reading “Remarks delivered by Franklin D. Raines, Chairman and CEO, Fannie Mae, June 12, 2001”

Bank branches are empty, and no-one at the ATM


Walking around Manhattan today, I couldn’t help notice the bank branches.  Couple of things … there are still quite a few branches, but they are all quite small.  But the real thing that struck me is that they are all empty.  There was never more than one customer at a teller line, and in most cases, there were no customers at the teller line.  That’s based on probably looking at 20 branches, today.  Same with the ATM’s.  Chase especially has ATM’s everywhere, but not once were they all in use, and never close to a line up. Continue reading Bank branches are empty, and no-one at the ATM

Biometrics as a loyalty driver


Surveys are always questionable, but the sheer size of the positive response on this one, makes it worthy for further thought. Finextra: Europeans willing to switch banks for biometric authentication The study, which spans seven European countries, shows that 57% of people would be more likely to change their current account provider if all it took was an identity card and fingerprint to establish and prove identity. In Germany this average increases to 64%, almost two thirds of the population, says LogicaCMG. The research found that over a quarter of Europeans – 27% – would be more likely to change … Continue reading Biometrics as a loyalty driver

Payments study 2006 – Middle East


Study on payments volumes in the middle east, and reference to global trends. CPILive.net your one-stop information portal in the Middle East. The Middle East will also match the global trend (-3.09%) of abandoning the cheque with a 3.66% decline. Kuwait is both the highest user of cheques in 2004 (104.47m of the 151.67m recorded within the Middle Eastern countries studied) and is predicted to exhibit the fastest decline at -5.77% by 2009.The market forecast, commissioned by ACI Worldwide, a leading international provider of solutions for electronic payments, and conducted with Global Insight, a provider financial and economic forecasting, showed … Continue reading Payments study 2006 – Middle East

Fraud fears scare off US Web shoppers


Surveys continue to talk about the fear of fraud online. I am closely watching the sponsors of these surveys. This one is sponsored by The Cyber Security Industry Alliance. Finextra: Fraud fears scare off US Web shoppers The US-wide survey of 1150 adults conducted by Pineda Consulting found that only 44% feel their information is safe when engaging in e-commerce and only a third (34%) feel that Internet banking is as safe as banking in the branch. This group is a lobby group, and this is taken from their site. CSIA is the only advocacy group dedicated to ensuring the … Continue reading Fraud fears scare off US Web shoppers

Google and financial services


Jon Kaplan, Head of Financial Services at Google spoke about leveraging Google for marketing purposes.  Some key points from his talk: Online /offline doesn’t matter to them – its all marketing and how it ties together across channels several examples, all Japanese, provide clues to the future bill boards, with QR code, that can be read by a phone, to receive offers location advertising to your cell phone, based on where you are physically, what merchants are in the same place, and presented on your cell phone Google trends to help sort out the clutter frequency of search terms, and … Continue reading Google and financial services