by Alan Nance
Many transformational programs in enterprise IT are no more than shiny objects sitting on a veneer layer that masks the unsustainable, expensive legacy they depend on. Imagine your organization as an hourglass, where the business is the globe on the top, and the technology team is the globe that sits below. In an hourglass, sand flows from top to bottom until empty, and when turned around, the sand flows the other way, again passing through a small neck, that neck is the only view from each sand globe to the other. Depending on your perspective sand is either rushing towards you or speeding away from you.
Continue reading…

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is urging the public to get in touch if they have been contacted by a company offering what they think could be a fraudulent investment. This plea comes as new research shows more than a fifth (22%) of over 55s surveyed  who suspect they have been contacted about a fraudulent investment in the last three years, did not tell anyone about it. The most common reason given for not reporting was not knowing who to report to (49%). Continue reading…

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published an updated list of public sector entities (PSEs) that may be treated as regional governments, local authorities or central governments for the calculation of capital requirements, in accordance with the EU Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR). Continue reading…

Today Nordea brings Apple Pay to customers in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Apple Pay is transforming mobile payments with an easy and secure way to pay that’s fast and convenient. With 1.7 billion card transactions per year and high mobile usage in the Nordics, delivering the benefits of digitalisation to customers is a cornerstone in Nordea’s strategy. Over the last few years, Nordea has systematically built up its mobile payment services portfolio. Continue reading…

The European Union published a report about the financial status of the banking sector in the European Union. While the credit institutions declined, the financial sector expanded in 2016, reflecting growth in both banks’ and non-banks’ assets. And there are more interesting outcomes from this report. You can read it on our website, just click on read more.
Continue reading…

Three former senior employees of the F.H Bertling group were today sentenced at Southwark Crown Court. This follows an SFO investigation into corrupt payments made to an agent of the Angolan state oil company, Sonangol, in relation to F.H Bertling’s freight forwarding business in Angola and a contract worth approximately $20 million. Continue reading…

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision today published assessment reports on the implementation of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) in Australia, Brazil, Canada and Switzerland. The assessments, which were conducted as part of the Committee’s Regulatory Consistency Assessment Programme (RCAP), indicate that the LCR regulations in each of these jurisdictions were found to be “Compliant” with the global Basel standards, the highest of the four possible grades.
Continue reading…

Yesterday we published the speech of Linda Woodall, Director of Life Insurance and Financial Advice, where she spook about the paper ‘Ageing Population and Financial Services Occasional Paper’. In the mean time the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) reveiled their findings from its first Financial Lives Survey. You can read the summary here on our website. We hope you enjoy reading it.
Continue reading…

The Financial Condusct Authority (FCA) published a paper on the aging popualtion. In her speech, Linda Woodall, Director of Life Insurance and Financial Advice, talks about the findings from the paper, like the risk that older consumers’ needs aren’t being fully met. And that there opportunities for firms to apply the findings as part of their own business strategies and models going forward.

Continue reading…

by Bob Vanstraelen
One of the hottest topics at every industry event I’ve attended recently is the threat of FinTech disruptors. As more and more of these small, specialist firms launch – think Revolut, N26 and Seamless (SEQR) – many retail bankers seem concerned that their size and portfolio is hindering them in the battle for customers. Actually, I think it’s quite the opposite, and it’s the wide breadth of services that traditional banks offer consumers, in contrast to FinTechs’ largely single-service offerings, that will prove to be their golden ticket to customer retention and loyalty. By offering a range of services, retail banks ultimately create more opportunities to understand their customers and therefore engage and grow with them – opportunities that single service firms don’t have. 
Continue reading…