Banks shift focus from products to customers

Reinforcing some of the statements in my piece on customer retention in the current issue of  Banking Technology, is this amusing comment from Stan Demarest, SVP of segment management at Hibernia National Bank:
“There was an article that came out probably 15 years ago in one of the banking trade journals, saying banks were so product-focused [...]

Self-defence technology in bank branches?

Among the many consequences of the current economic context is a rise in hostile feelings directed at the banking industry. In France, this appears to have translated into increased rudeness and aggressive behaviour from irate customers interacting with banking staff. The French Banking Association said recently that the number of “incivilities” had risen by 20% [...]

Mobile banking taking off, any minute now.

Mobile banking is the way of the future. At least, that is the conclusion of a recent study conducted by pollster Novametrie, and commissioned by the European Financial Management Marketing Association, Crédit Agricole, Microsoft and CapGemini Consulting.
Based on a Pan-European survey of 5,000 online banking users and of about forty banking and mobile phone luminaries, [...]

Sarkozy’s bank account: just an old-fashioned scam

Remember the story that emerged last October about French president Nicolas Sarkozy having his bank account siphoned, or as some hastened to conclude, “hacked into”? Well, as expected, it turns out the scam is far less sophisticated than initially suggested, especially by our friends the vendors of security technology.
In fact, the fraud originated at a [...]

When financial tech talks to consumers

The vendor community’s marketing and external communication efforts generally tend to be directed at the corporate world: the financial institutions that make up their client base, and, in the case of listed companies, investors and analysts.
But for some technology providers, such as smart card and terminal vendors, while the initial customer usually is a financial [...]

Mobile payments: the micro-finance example.

In the same way that micro-credit – the extension of very small loans to low income individuals or businesses – started in developing countries before gaining traction in Western societies with people excluded from regular banking offerings, could poor countries also be showing the way in terms of mobile payment adoption?
Mobile phone operator Orange announced [...]

Retail IT investment expected up in ’09, but only just…

In the continuously negative news flow that has surrounded the banking industry in the last few months, technology hasn’t really been the main focus of attention. However, there is little doubt that IT spending in European banks will suffer in the coming months, as confirmed by a recent report by research firm Celent.
It predicts that [...]

SAS comes up with a replacement for credit scoring

SAS, the Cary, NC-based analytics company, has developed a sophisticated replacement for credit scoring which promises greater accuracy, process transparency, and a single number from 1 to 432 which will describe a borrower’s financial position. The score can be tied to a mortgage and remain with it through securitization, providing a quick, in-depth way to [...]

Card technology and the adoption curve

Just like last year and the year before, and well … the year before that, “contactless” was one of the main buzzwords at the 2008 Cartes trade show in Paris. And just like last year, vendors and card schemes have been boasting about their pilots and partnerships all over Europe, some involving mobile phones, others [...]

Will the financial crisis resurrect CRM initiatives?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) seems an unlikely candidate to pull banks out of the messiest financial crisis in decades, given the disappointing results experienced by many institutions after their first wave of CRM investments.
Yet that is the very thing suggested in a joint press release by the European Financial Management & Marketing Association and Atos [...]