June 01, 2012

Is the Queen worth it?

I was travelling on British Airways the other day, and really enjoyed their article in Business Life Magazine about how much the Queen costs the economy,

As a result, I thought it worth posting today as we’re about to head off on a four-day vacation in Britain to celebrate her sixty years on the throne …

Queen1

Queen2

… I normally spend less than sixty minutes on the throne, heh, heh.

Here’s a summary of the article, which makes for good reading I think.

What does the Queen cost the taxpayer?

Anti-monarchist group Republic says the Queen cost taxpayers £200 million in 2011. That is calculated on the basis of the amount she receives from the Civil List plus the cost of security for major events such as the Royal Wedding.

That means the Queen is good value as the real cost is less than zero thanks to the Queen's great- great- great-grandfather George III.

After losing Britain's colonies in the Americas, George III needed funds and offered to exchange the rents from the Crown Estate, Britain's biggest landowner, for the Civil List stipend.

Last year the Crown Estate raised revenues of more than £230m, leaving taxpayers in the black.

From next year, after the Civil List has been abolished, the Queen will instead receive a proportion of revenues from the Crown Estate in recognition of the funds it contributes to the Treasury's coffers.

Over the last five years, payments to the monarch have fallen by 19% in real terms.

Last year, she received a £32.1 million annual stipend from the Treasury via the Civil List. The payment equated to 51 pence for every British taxpayer, less than a third of the price of a cup of coffee. 

This year the Civil List has been cut to £31 million, and will be abolished next year.

The Thames River Pageant on Sunday will cost the taxpayer nothing as it is funded by over £10 million of private donations and sponsorship, including a large chunk from JPMorgan.

Howard Archer, chief economist at consultancy HIS Global Insight, claims the Diamond Jubilee extra bank holiday will cost Britain £7 billion, or 0.5% of GDP … but he also accepts that this will be offset in part by a boost to the economy from spending on Diamond Jubilee street parties, as well as an increase in tourism.

Research by VisitBritain found the monarchy also generated £500 million from foreign tourists in 2009, out of a total spend of £4.6 billion in the UK.

Of the tourists who came to the country last year 5.8 million visited a castle, with London's royal palaces the top destinations.

More than 400,000 took in Buckingham Palace, earning £41.7 million for House of Windsor Inc, which the Queen used to maintain her royal houses rather than rely on money from taxpayers.

The monarchy has always been good news at the box-office, with British-made films The Queen and The King's Speech generating £49.3m and £88m respectively.

800 private companies from Rigby and Peller, which makes the Queen's bras, to Hunter, which makes her wellington boots, benefit from an association with the House of Windsor through a Royal Warrant. 

The Royal Wedding was a showcase for British design with Sarah Burton, top designer at the Alexander McQueen label, catapulted into the limelight when she designed the wedding dress.

She is not the wealthiest person in Britain

The Queen is not the wealthiest person in Britain. The richest resident, according to the 2011 Sunday Times Rich List is Indian steel magnate Laskshmi Mittal, who has a fortune of £17.5 billion.

The Queen is not the richest woman as Kirsty Bertarelli has an estimated worth of £6.9 billion.

The Queen is not even as rich as J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter series.

She is the 257th richest person in the country, with assets of around £300 million (although the Sunday Times does leave out the Queen's most valuable assets: the Crown Estate is valued at up to £8 billion, with Buckingham Palace worth a further £3.5 billion, and the Royal Art collection worth billions more.

Nor is she the wealthiest monarch

That accolade goes to Hans Adam II, the ruler of Liechtenstein, who has an estimated worth of £3 billion, half of which comes from their ownership of LGT Bank.

Second richest monarch is Prince Albert von Thum und Taxis of Germany with £1.27 billion of assets in real estate, art and shares (and no royal duties as he’s not a reigning monarch)

Prince Albert Grimaldi II of Monaco also beats the Queen with £622 million of assets

The Queen’s lowly worth of £318 million seems minuscule by comparison, although it is double the worth of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands whose £127 million is mainly comprised of holdings in Royal Dutch Shell

And she’s not the highest cost for a monarch either

The Queen is also good value for money when you compare her budget with those of other monarchs.

Annual budgets for maintaining European monarchs and heads of state 2010-2011:

  • £33.1 million Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands
  • £32.1 million Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain
  • £23.4 million King Harald V of Norway 
  • £11.5 million King Albert II of Belgium 
  • £10.5 million Margrethe II of Denmark 
  • £10.2 million Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden 
  • £7.43 million King Juan Carlos of Spain 
  • £7.2 million Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg 

... and then there's Nicolas Sarkozy,
 President of 
France  who cost the French taxpayer £93 million last year.

Queen

Sources: The English Blog; Elysee Palace; Professor Herman Matthijs, Ghent University

 

 

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Things worth reading: 1st June 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

 

 

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May 31, 2012

Clearing & Settlement: a coagulation of regulation

Yesterday marked another milestone in the progress of the Clearing & Settlement Working Group (CAS-WG), with our second plenary meeting.

This time it was held at the London Stock Exchange ...

CAS-WG-1

... and discussed the progress of the four Subject Groups that were created after our first meeting at the beginning of March.

Since then, the four groups have met twice and created a rough agenda of their focal points.

It should be noted that these groups are still fledgling however, and until our next plenary on 18th July are open to influence.  For example, two are still without confirmed Chairs and the other two Chairpersons will only be confirmed at the next meetings to be held in mid-June (if you want to Chair or Co-Chair any of these groups, then you need to attend or put your name forward for these meetings).

The four groups are looking at the impact of change in clearing and settlement infrastructures and cover:

  • Risk;
  • Regulation;
  • Standards; and
  • Market Infrastructures.

The aim of the four groups is to take the mass of regulatory change – Dodd-Frank, FATCA, EMIR, MiFID II, Basel III and more – and work out:

  • what the regulation means and is trying to achieve;
  • how joined up the regulation appears alongside other regulatory  changes;
  • if it achieves the regulatory objectives it sets out to achieve;
  • if it is appropriate and feasible to implement as a result;
  • how it will be implemented;
    • I
  • what it means for systems and operations, and the changes required;
  • what it means for products and services, and the changes required;

with the intent of arriving at conclusions which can be communicated to all parties.

The Subject Groups are open for anyone to attend, and are intended to generate a 360o view of the changes required for Clearing & Settlement over the coming years.

This is why we fully expect CSDs, CCPs, buy-side, sell-side, solutions providers, fund managers, corporates and more to get on board with the CAS-WG over time, many of whom were represented in the room yesterday.

The meeting covered the four working groups, who outlined the initial themes explored.

The Risk Subject Group is focused upon:

  • Counterparty Risk – default management
  • CCP default Risk
  • Collateral Risk
  • Operational Risk (Société Générale, UBS, JPMorgan)
  • Market Risk (Eurozone)
  • Enterprise Risk Management versus the silo approach
  • Senior management engagement in risk management

The Group has nominated Paul Young, Associate Director for Business Risk Services at Grant Thornton as its Chair, and the next meeting of the Risk Subject Group will be on 20th June 2012.

CAS-WG2

The Regulation Subject Group is focused upon:

  • Understanding new regulation, the impacts and cross-border inconsistencies
  • Basel III and the treatment of collateral
  • The European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and how it impacts both Over-the-Counter (OTC) Central Counterparty (CCP) clearing and Central Securities Depositories (CSD) regulation
  • The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive revision (MiFID II) and its impact on internal infrastructures and the market at large
  • The Financial Services Authority (FSA) break-up and how the new Bank of England regulator will change the City
  • Dodd-Frank’s impact upon OTC derivatives CCP clearing
  • Trade Repositories

The Group has Kiri Self of the Realisation Group as Acting Chair, and is open to nomination for this position.   The Group’s next meeting will be on 18th June 2012.

The Standards Subject Group is focused upon:

  • Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI’s) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB)
  • CCP clearing
  • The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and payment standards
  • The move to T2S – Will this aid or hinder global standards?
  • Unique  identifiers in trade messaging
  • CCP’s & the use (or not) of existing standards
  • Retail banking implications as a result of FATCA developments
  • TARGET2 for Securities (T2S) & post-trade compression

The Group has Darren Pearson of the Realisation Group as Acting Chair and is open for nomination for this position.  The Group has its next meeting on 19th June 2012.

Finally, the Market Infrastructure Subject Group is focused upon:

  • The impact to margin processes and valuation-risk of CCP’s
  • The practical realities of clearing interoperability between differing clearing models
  • Further entrants into the CCP space
  • The impact of T2S in 2015 to post-trade functions
  • The various aspects of the impact of trade repositories

The Group has nominated Kathleen Tyson-Quah of Granularity Ltd as its Chair, and has its next meeting on 21st June 2012.

After the outline of the discussions of each Subject Group, the plenary also had several panel discussions about the emerging themes under discussion and debate.

The first panel comprised:

  • Kathleen Tyson-Quah, CEO of Granularity;
  • Matthew Coupe, Director with Redkite Financial Markets; and
  • Paul Young, Associate Director with Grant Thornton.

CAS-WG4

What came out of this for me was a lot of discussion about:

  • how Value-at-Risk models are fundamentally flawed, vis-à-vis the JPMorgan Whale and more;
  • the fact that we don’t even know what the problems are in financial markets, let alone solutions;
  • that technology is making everything far too complex, vis-à-vis Andy Haldane’s reference  to the fact that to understand a CDO these days requires reading 1,125,000 pages of documentation;
  • that concentration risk is increasing as regulations drive more product clearing to fewer clearers; and
  • that liquidity risk is increasing as Basel III, Dodd-Frank, Trade Repositories and more increases the likelihood that corporates and counterparties will just stop hedging or, even more worrisome, trading.

The outcome overall of this first panel was a clear view that markets have to wake up to the fact that if they cannot quantify and measure risk, then they should stop trading those products that create such risks.

That would be an awesome change of attitude.

The second panel comprised:

  • Andrew Simpson, formerly with EuroCCP;
  • Graeme Austin, CEO of ISITC Europe; and
  • John Tanner, Manager with the London Stock Exchange.

CAS-WG2a

This panel continued the dialogue with specific commentary around:

  • how can we have a single global LEI referencing system when ISO, the FSB and the CFTC all seem to have different agendas?
  • the fact we have more CCPs in Europe today than we had twenty years ago, regardless of European harmonisation and regulation to standardise and consolidate;
  • the corporates do not see themselves as part of the financial markets, when they clearly are;
  • that OTC Derivatives are moving through regulatory requirements towards being both on exchange and cleared, and whether the two parts could be separated or not;
  • the EMIR is already going to miss its January 2013 deadline, according to EU head of the unit that drafted EMIR, Patrick Pearson;

and more.

The end result of these discussions included further questions from the floor, including a few challenging ones:

  • as we have never had a CCP failure, what is the issue with CCP concentration risk?
  • most banks are not even standardised and interoperable internally, so how can you expect the market to achieve standardisation?

and more.

All in all, a very positive start and lively future for the CAS-WG.

If you want to join in, attendance is free.  The dates of future meetings are:

  • The Regulation Subject Group’s next meeting will be on 18th June 2012
  • The Standards Subject Group has its next meeting on 19th June 2012
  • The Risk Subject Group will be on 20th June 2012
  • The Market Infrastructure Subject Group has its next meeting on 21st June 2012
  • The Next Plenary Meeting will be at the BT Auditorium on 18th July 2012

Oh, and there is an informal lunch on 10th July at Canary Wharf about Central Bank Systems for those interested too.

If you want to register for any of these meetings, just send an email to: chris.skinner@fsclub.co.uk, kamila@fsclub.co.uk or andy.coppell@fsclub.co.uk.

 

 

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Things worth reading: 31st May 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

 
 
 

 

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May 30, 2012

Russia's greatest challenge is still to come

Just spent a few days in Moscow.

It’s my third visit here, and each time I find the country intriguing, enlightening, engaging and frustrating.

By way of example, the society is still very rules-based but everyone ignores the rules because no-one enforces them properly.

The traffic is jammed all day on the freeways, and cars dodge and dive between lanes in aggressive manner, ignoring all road markings.

The hotel we stayed with offer everything from robes to rubdowns, but ask for a cappuccino at breakfast and the answers a plain: “no”.

The best way to illustrate the Moscow experience is the restaurant we went to last night.

At the concierge desk, we asked for a table for five.

They said they don’t have one, only a table for four.

We said that’s ok.

They said, you cannot have this table as there are five of you.

The conversation carried on like this for about five minutes until, eventually, the concierge said “OK” and, once past the concierge, the waiter gave us an extra chair for our table of four to accommodate five.

This experience occurred at least once a day during my visit: you arrive somewhere to be told no but, if you believe the answer should be yes, you just stubbornly refuse to accept no until the rules change.

It is this experience that shows that the Russian economy is one where, if they can erode this rules-based rigidity, it could really rock and roll.

However, that is unlikely to happen for many reasons: infrastructure, size, breadth, investment, political structures, financial markets and more; too many to list here but, from this visit, two challenges to Russia’s future stand out more than many others: a complete lack of trust and a culture of corruption.

I hope I am wrong about these two factors and would like anyone to challenge these two factors, but they both appear to be prevalent in my visits to Moscow.

The lack of trust issue I alluded to the first time I visited Moscow.

That time I met the major exchanges – MICEX and RTS – and they told me that, due to the collapse of the financial system years before, no-one trusts each other.  This results in total collateralisation of positions at start of trading, a position untenable in European and American markets.

After all, how can you leverage your positions if you have to show that you have enough collateral to cover them (that’s a joke btw).

This time, the same lack of trust displays itself in Russian society, as illustrated by an article that appeared in the Economist last week.

The article shows that Russia has the largest population of internet users in Europe – yes, some of us think Russia is part of Europe, especially when their grannies come second in our Eurovision song contest – and yet, their internet usage is far more like China’s.

They don’t trust companies to deliver goods and services, and they won’t pay until they see the goods. Hence, Russians order online and pay in cash.  Alongside all this, they don’t like companies if they are unable to complain to a human being, so anyone doing business online has to run a call centre operation to support their online services.

In some ways that seems reasonable to me, although it adds a major layer of cost overhead.

So trust, or lack of it, is a major constraint on the Russian economy.

The second constraint is corruption.

Throughout our trip, we encountered examples of possible corruption from the strange sculptor statue to Peter the Great to the rebuild of the Moskva Hotel.

The statue was originally of Christopher Columbus to celebrate the 500th anniversary of his voyage of discovery of America in 1992 ... but no-one wanted it, so the mayor of Moscow agreed to pay for it as he was friends with the sculptor, but only if the sculptor could change it to look a litlle more like Peter.

Peter the Great

Hmmm ...

Another rumour locally is that the rebuild of the Moskva Hotel, which is the new Four Seasons Hotel next to Red Square, is all down to money laundering,

The hotel is an exact replica of the original hotel.

Hotel_moskva_now

Exact in every detail.

For example, an accident meant that the front of the hotel had two designs.  

Stalin was meant to choose which was better, but signed the designs in the middle of the drawings.  

As a result, both facades were incorporated and have been incorporated once again into the new bulid - note that the left side of the hotel differs in design to the right when, originally, they were meant to be symmetrical.

Our guide felt that the rebuild was either due to the old hotel being full of paranoid Stalin bugs in the bedrooms or was purely being rebuilt as part of a money laundering process.

I am not sure if such things are true, but Russia does have an Occupy movement that is protesting the re-election of Vladimir Putin.

Putin’s position is certainly being challenged in several quarters.

Take the Western styled press publication, the Moscow Times.

Delivered for free to my hotel room daily, the newspaper writes honestly about several big issues in Moscow.  Here’s one example that really caught my attention:

Over the past 12 years, Russia has become a full-fledged mafia state. One day, historians will chart its exact structure, but it seems clear that it consists of several large families headed by President Vladimir Putin's close associates and loyal oligarchs. Alongside them, countless crews of siloviki, bureaucrats, gangsters and affiliated businessmen work on their own, their networks varying from local to nationwide.

Another article was noteworthy:

Continued protests in Russia will likely lead to a violent backlash or chaotic changes in the government, according to a new study ordered by former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin from the same think tank that predicted the street protests months before they began.

I like Moscow with its amazing Metro system and buzz of life.

I don’t like the undercurrents there however, particularly those of corruption and mistrust, rules and rigidity.

These undercurrents damage the system and possibly will never allow Russia to truly achieve its potential.

Shame.

On the other hand, rules can be changed and society can adapt.

For example, there is an Occupy movement here, protesting about Putin’s re-election.

It built up  a head of steam after the election but, over time, the political protest has fizzled out.

However, it may come back and if the Occupy movement in Moscow ever achieves a breakthrough, its achievement could be similar to Glasnost and Perestroika before.

In other words it, or something like it, could really mean that Russia’s doors are opened for real global competitiveness and integration.

A space worth watching and, just for balance, most countries have corruption and distrust.  It's just more exaggerated in some countries compared to others.

Meanwhile, if you missed the Babushki of Buranovo at the Eurovision, it’s well worth a viewing:

You see, there is a happy side to Russia too.

 

 

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Things worth reading: 30th May 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

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May 29, 2012

Why the branch vs branchless debate is futile

I’ve been struck by many nuances of culture and creed lately.

There are many examples, but it all comes down to dealing with the customer as a unique entity, not some mass market.

For example, why does Spain have so many bank branches?

Spain has around 43,000 bank branches, about half as many as the whole of America.  America is a country with almost seven times as many people and a land mass twenty times larger than Spain’s.

And why do Russian’s buy online but pay in cash?

You might as well ask why are the British British or the Dutch Dutch, as it’s all to do with our generational DNA.

You cannot reprogram a generation overnight, even if Apple has done a good job of trying to achieve this.

That is why any bank looking to innovate must carefully consider the cultural acceptability of their innovations within a country – the French rebelled massively against offshore call centresand Germany, even with the crisis, still has a great trust in their banks and their direct, rather than remote, operations.

This is why some countries in Asia have massively innovated in mobile – the Japanese have no space in their homes for PCs, pets or luggage, which is why they love mobile, chihuahuas and rent their suitcases  – whilst others have not  – Americans can have computer rooms, Great Danes and Winnebagoes by the truck load.

This is why we can talk about getting rid of branches, but that only works where customers want to lose their branch.

In many emerging and developing economies, branches are expanding.  In fact, JPMorgan has been actively expanding its American branch network as this generates new account opening, customer loyalty, cross-sell opportunities and generally accounts for additional revenues of $1 million per year per branch.

However, as cultures evolve and economies move forward, things do change.

This is why we are seeing the decline of the role of branch in most Northern European economies as remote access, self-service and electronic identities enable account openings and ubiquitous service without the need to ever set foot in a branch.

But what really help the Northern Europeans is the decline of the use of cheques (checks), unlike America where the check is still a strong motivational force for branch traffic.

All of this was debated in depth by my mate Brett King over on the Economist’s website during the past two weeks.

Brett lost the debate, with 64% of the audience saying that bank branches are not obsolete whilst 36% voted that they are (including me).

But this is a debate that will continue and it really does come down to local attitudes and generational change, neither of which will change overnight of even in one generation necessarily … but change it will. 

One day.

 

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Things worth reading: 29th May 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

 
The Independent
  
 

 

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May 28, 2012

Banks take IT efficiency gains in bonus payments

As mentioned, we had a keynote presentation at the Financial Services Club from Andrew Haldane, Executive Director responsible for Financial Stability with the Bank of England, last week.

The presentation was delivered under the Chatham House Rule, so I cannot say too much about what Andy covered, but there was a theme throughout that may surprise many of you.

The financial services markets are technology markets.

They have been technology driven markets since the earliest days of my work in computing – yes, before the punched card and the dinosaurs – and so you would think they would be the most technically efficient.

They are not.

Andy picked on research by the American academic, Thomas Philippson of New York University, which shows that the markets are inefficient.

His findings prove that the unit costs for finance have risen over the past century.

In other words, the financial markets of Rockefeller and J.P.Morgan a century ago were more efficient at a unit cost level than the markets of today.

That is exceptional, and exceptionally disappointing.

How come?

From Thomas Philippon’s report:

“I find that the unit cost of intermediation has increased since the mid-1970s and is now significantly higher than it was at the turn of the twentieth century. In other words, the finance industry that sustained the expansion of railroads, steel and chemical industries, and later the electricity and automobile revolutions seems to have been more efficient than the current finance industry.”

He further finds “that this (annual) unit cost is around 2% and relatively stable over time. In other words, I estimate that it costs two cents per year to create and maintain one dollar of intermediated financial asset.”

The bottom-line of Philippon’s findings is that bankers’ compensation is increasing, contributing to a static unit cost, even though technology is automating:

“The income share grows from 2% to 6% from 1870 to 1930. It shrinks to less than 4% in 1950, grows slowly to 5% in 1980, and then increases rapidly to more than 8% in 2010. Surprisingly, the tremendous improvements in information technologies of the past 30 years have not led to a decrease in the average cost of intermediation, or at least not yet.”

In other words, income is going up whilst costs stay the same or, putting it simplistically, banks have taken all the gains from technology and redistributed them as payments through bonuses and increased salaries (or so Philippon implies).

That is why the charts below show that general trade firms have radically pushed down costs through technological efficiencies whilst banking has not.

Legend
Banking picture

Trade gains

Shame.

The other piece of this is the fuelling effect that technology has had on complexity however.

I’ve written about this several times before, showing my favourite charts of Goldman Sachs and credit derivatives, but Andy made things a little clearer when he outlined the complexity of Asset-Backed Securities (ABS).

The original Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) could be understood by reading about 200 pages of documentation;

Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDO) would require reading about 30,000 pages of information; whilst

CDO-squared, where Credit Default Swaps multiplied the risks, resulting in around 1.125 million pages of documentation required to be read to get close to tracking the global complexity of such instruments.

Put another way, in the first iteration of the Basel Accord there were seven risk metrics requiring seven calculations; by the time we get around to implementing Basel III, over 200,000 risk categories will require over 200 million calculations.

Between the automation of the system, the overpayment of the operators, the silo approach to finance and the complexity such silos create with inherent risk, there is a strong probability that the new Bank regulator will seek to ensure far more transparency through automation and integration to avoid arbitrage risks.

Or something like that anyway.

 

 

 

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Things worth reading: 28th May 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

 
BBC

 

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May 27, 2012

The Finanser's Week: 20th May - 27th May 2012

Our biggest stories of the week are ...

The end of 'free' banking

In the 1970s, the UK's Midland Bank introduced a new competitive service – free banking. It wasn’t free of course, but it appeared that way. The idea being that if you stayed in credit, they wouldn’t’ charge you anything. It...

Lázaro Campos to step down; Gottfreid Leibbrandt new CEO of SWIFT

It appears that every time a CEO of SWIFT speaks at the Financial Services Club, they leave SWIFT! Lenny Schrank, the then CEO, spoke at the Club in 2006 and left a few months later; then Lazaro Campos spoke at... 

Social media platforms are not the same as social media

Everyone’s now talking about mobile payments and mobile banking. I was talking about that effectively as a core strategic area back in 2004. So it took about five years to become the mainstream bank conversation. Now, I talk about social...

Did demutualisation fuel the UK crisis?

I was recently asked to make a comment on the UK Building Societies sector. Like American credit unions, most building societies exist in the interests of their members as mutual organisations. They balance customer interests with their portfolio of business,...

Case Study: Barclays Pingit for Consumers and Corporates

There’s a strong dialogue about why new services such as PayPal and Square take off so fast, and the answer is a combination of usability and accessibility. If something is easy and it works, then it can gain critical mass...

Things worth reading: the European View (7)

This week's view from Europe, courtesy of Edith Rigler:

  • Moving to e-procurement can deliver huge savings – European Commission, 20 April 2012
  • Credit squeeze in Eastern European  – Handelsblatt, 21 May 2012
  • “Geuro” as parallel currency for Greece  – Handelsblatt, 22 May 2012
  • “Lost generation” flees  to Germany  – Handelsblatt , 21 May 2012
  • How Jo Ackermann halved Deutsche Bank – Handelsblatt, 21 May 2012
  • German corporates remain optimistic  – Handelsblatt, 21 May 2012

 

The major general news stories of the week include ...

HSBC postpones plans to leave UK 'indefinitely' - The Telegraph

Stuart Gulliver, HSBC's chief executive, has said the bank had decided to drop "indefinitely" plans to look at moving its headquarters from London to Hong Kong.

HSBC's Greek branches ready for drachma - The Independent
HSBC has set out contingency plans for all its 15 Greek branches to cope with a return of the drachma.

HSBC machines hit by IT failure - BBC
UK customers of HSBC report problems using cash machines, making card payments and online transactions, but the bank says the problem is fixed.

NBNK 'in Catch-22' over Lloyds sell-off - The Telegraph
NBNK is struggling to convince Lloyds Banking Group it has the requisite financial firepower to buy the 632 branches the high street bank is trying to sell.

Double trouble at JP Morgan: trader's losses could exceed $7bn - The Independent

The crisis at JP Morgan escalated yesterday as it emerged its trading losses in London could rise to as much as $7bn (£4.5bn) and the US bank cancelled a share buyback. Fears were growing that the losses could spiral from an initial $2bn, which was declared on 10 May, as

Zuckerberg loses friends on Wall Street as regulators probe $19bn slump - The Independent

Facebook's $104bn stock market flotation descended into anger and recrimination last night, as shares in the social network slumped further in value and regulators investigated whether important information was kept hidden from some investors.


UK warned of credit downgrade - The Independent
The UK will lose its prized triple-A credit rating next year as a result of the recession and the euro crisis, according to one of the City's most respected bond fund managers.

Greece: The upside of default - BBC
Why a Greek default wouldn't spell the end of the world

Eurozone set to abandon Greece – and austerity - The Independent
Eurozone nations have been advised to draw up emergency plans to handle Greece's possible exit from the single currency, it emerged last night.

IIF: Spain's bank losses could hit €260bn - The Telegraph
Spanish bank loan losses could hit €260bn (£210bn), with the industry likely to need some €60bn euros in outside help to stay afloat, the International Institute of Finance said Monday.

 

If you like the Finanser, check out the books of the blog: the Complete Banker Series

 

The Financial Services Club is sponsored by:

  BT Logo 

For details of sponsorship email us.

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May 25, 2012

The end of 'free' banking

In the 1970s, the UK's Midland Bank introduced a new competitive service – free banking.

It wasn’t free of course, but it appeared that way.

The idea being that if you stayed in credit, they wouldn’t’ charge you anything.

It was a huge success.

So much so that Midland acquired many customers from Barclays, NatWest and Lloyds.

After a few months, the other banks decided they had to do something and followed Midland’s lead… just as Midland realised that it was a stupid idea and decided to cancel the whole thing due to the massive losses they were incurring from free banking.

Unfortunately, the market had all moved to the model though and none of them could now retract the offer without both losing market share and the reputational damage that goes with that.

Hence, the UK has forever since had free banking.

Until now.

Now, the regulators are saying they are going to get rid of free banking.

Oh no!

Why would the regulator do that?

Because free banking is a tax on the poor that subsidises the rich.

Free banking became the de facto standard for banking, but what it meant in reality is that all other aspects of a deposit account became expensive: loans, credit cards and particularly the unexpected or unauthorised overdraft.

There are many stories of students and the underemployed becoming overdrawn by £1 and finding charges being levied, sometimes upwards of £100, as a result.

Bear in mind that those who go overdrawn unexpectedly are often those who have the hardest time with money, and you can see why such charges became punitive on the poor.

In fact, the UK banks cross-subsidise the free part of banking with significant charges in all other areas of banking.

So why don’t they change it?

Several reasons, but the main one is that any bank that says it will charge all their customers for deposit accounts feel they are likely to lose significant numbers of customers, market share and get a large amount of negative publicity.

So why don’t all the banks agree to scrap it?

Because they would all be accused of ripping off their customers and acting in a cartel fashion.

That is why it needs a regulatory change to make it happen, according to Andrew Bailey.

Andrew, currently an executive director at the Bank of England, has spoken out on several occasions against free banking.

I say he is currently with the Bank, as the Bank takes over the responsibilities of the regulatory body, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), soon and when it does Andrew will become the head of the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA).

The PRA will regulate the banks and Andrew made a speech to the Westminster Business Forum this week (read the script here), making it clear that he wants to get rid of free banking.

The likelihood is that this will result in customers being charged around £180 per year for their core deposit account function.

Consumer groups don’t think this is a good idea.

For example, Richard Lloyd, executive director with Which?, says that: “it’s a complete myth that banking is free.  Customers pay more than £9 billion a year in fees and lost interest on their accounts.  The idea that if banks charged more, they would stop trying to mis-sell other financial products, is completely unfounded.”

In other words, he thinks that the banks witll levy this fee and still pay low interest on customers in credit whilst penalising those in debt.

However, the logic can be extended a little further thanks to the insights provided by Andy Haldane,  a colleague of Mr.Bailey’s, who gave a brilliant speech at the Financial Services Club this week.

The speech was given under the Chatham House Rule but there was one part that talked a little around the themes of what is free and what is not.

Let’s liken it to walking into a sweet shop and asking for a chocolate bar: “I’ll have a Mars bar please.”

The sweet shop owner says, “very good sir, and it is free.”

“What?”

“No charge sir.”

“Very good too.”

So you ask for a Twix, and that’s free too.

So you then grab a Wispa bar, a Twirl and a Dairy Milk.

All free.

Fantastic.

So you grab the Ferrero Roche, a chocolate fit for an Ambassador.

“Ah, sir, you need to pay for that one”, says the shop keeper.

“Really?” you ask, “how much?”

“£248.24 pence sir.”

In other words, on expensive chocolate subsidises all the others which are free.

The only problem with this analogy is that the poorest are not dependent on Ferrero Roche but are often dependent upon credit, loans and overdrafts.

Hence the reason why the PRA, Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England and their new powers will force the UK banks to abandon free banking and will start charging every customer for their current account.

Let’s just hope all the other charges for unauthorised overdrafts, personal loans and credit cards come down as a result.

  Flying_pigs

 

 

 

Posted at 03:03 PM | | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

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Things worth reading: 25th May 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

 

Posted at 05:21 AM in Reading | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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May 24, 2012

Social media platforms are not the same as social media

Everyone’s now talking about mobile payments and mobile banking.  I was talking about that effectively as a core strategic area back in 2004.  So it took about five years to become the mainstream bank conversation.

Now, I talk about social payments and social banking.  I’ve been talking about this as a core strategic area since 2008, so it will be around 2013 to 2014 when most banks get onto the bankwagon.

Interestingly, many already are, with American Express being up there on the top of the heap for social interactions.

There’s been loads of coverage of AMEX’s social stuff, and so I don’t really want to repeat all that stuff here, but here are three standouts.

First, go checkout the AMEX social media page and its links to their Facebook and other activities:

AMEX social

Then read Jeff Bullas’s blog about why their strategy is working and why it is important for them.

And finally, for background on AMEX’s journey into social media, read the Mashable’s summary of a speech by Leslie Berland, SVP of Digital Partnerships and Development at AMEX, from this year’s South by South West.

AMEX are amazing everyone with their innovative approaches from using retweets to  provide loyalty rewards to teaming with firms like Zynga.

AMEX really get this space, but they are not the only ones.  I’ve been pretty impressed with Visa and Barclaycard too, as well as a few others.

What is it these guys get that the others don’t?

What they get is that it’s not about Facebook and Twitter; it’s about sales, service and relationships.

In fact, the real thing they get is that Facebook and Twitter is not social media but social platform, as is YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, Foursquare and more.

Social platforms are like Salesforce.com and the internet.

They are the building blocks of the new financial firms.

They are not the end goals in and of themselves, but are the enablers towards real social connectivity.

That is why when banks talk about We’ve gotta getta blog out there; build a Facebook page; launch a YouTube channel; and engage on Twitter, that is not the answer.

Many firms believes that having a holding twitter name @MyBank and Facebook page is all you need.

Some go as far as to populate their pages with links and news.

But you still don’t get it if you think that way.

This was brought home to me by a fantastic chart published by Business Insider the other day, showing the complexity of our socially enriched and globally connected world (doubleclick image to enlarge).

Social media world

The chart clearly shows that the core platforms of Facebook and Twitter are now being leveraged to the hilt by specialist services from content curation to social marketing management; from social ads to social intelligence; from apps for gaming to apps for sharing to apps for commerce; and more.

The key point of this slide is that we now can see that Facebook and Twitter are platforms, like the internet itself is a platform, that provide the underpinnings for far more targeted and specialist social connectivity.

In other words, the kaleidoscopic world of the web - which many institutions are only just learning to catch up with - are built upon the basic building blocks: Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook et al.

This means that the AMEXs, Visa’s and Barclaycard’s are one step beyond those that are just getting into this stuff, who are ten steps beyond those who think they’ve just gotta getta blog out there.

Get a social life before the social life gets you.

 

 

 

Posted at 08:45 AM in Innovation, Internet, Marketing, Mobile, Social Finance, Technology | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Things worth reading: 24th May 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

 

The Independent

 

 

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May 23, 2012

Did demutualisation fuel the UK crisis?

I was recently asked to make a comment on the UK Building Societies sector.

Like American credit unions, most building societies exist in the interests of their members as mutual organisations.

They balance customer interests with their portfolio of business, and try to manage all on an even keel.

Unlike most other financial institutions, the building societies generally have an executive team with an extremely long tenure – the average building society keeps its CEO in position for around 15 years or more – compared to just under six years for a typical FTSE 100 company.

In fact, this article from the FT sums up the sector well and, to paraphrase its content:

The building society segment employs 50,000 people while the whole UK financial services sector, according to the UK Treasury, employs 1 million.

Building societies tend to think longer-term than banks and aim for high levels of job satisfaction.  An example is the Hanley Economic building society, a north Staffordshire-based mutual with six branches and about £350 million in assets.

Hanley’s average length of service is 16 years, which means they have a great deal of experience and provide plenty of opportunities for individuals to develop into different roles.  In their 2010 staff survey a key strength identified was the variety in roles across the business. The multi-skilling of individuals has helped to manage varying levels of business without having to reduce or increase our headcount.

In particular they recruit attitude and behaviour to support excellent customer service and provide the skills where required. An example is that all of our branch managers have been internally promoted.

The Co-operative Financial Services is another example of an employer that thinks longer term and more about staff development.

Since its merger with Britannia building society in 2009, CFS has carried out an organisation redesign and introduced a new leadership structure and operating model. Despite these changes, employee turnover in 2009 was 10 per cent, which CFS says is lower than other large financial services that operate large call centres.

Many mutuals also offer more family-friendly and flexible approaches to careers – another contrast with the long working hours culture many bankers are reputed to work. For example, a third of staff at Nationwide, the UK’s biggest building society with 19,000 staff, work less than 35 hours a week.

It has also introduced a flexible retirement policy, giving employees the automatic right to work until they are 75 on the same terms and conditions as staff working past 60, including private health and life cover.

Its other family-friendly policies include two weeks off on full pay for fathers expecting new babies or adopting children; employment breaks for up to a year for staff with longer than 12 months service; and job sharing.

“The message is that we have a real commitment to work-life balance,” says the society, which has seen that commitment recognised by a number of awards, including, in 2009, the prestigious Investors in People Gold Status award for its people, communication, training and development policies – given to less than 1 per cent of companies in the scheme.

So why have I bothered to post all this background about Building Societies?

Because I realised the other day that its all the converted Building Societies that contributed the most to Britain’s disastrous position today, not ignoring the contribution of the Fred Goodwin and the RBS crew.

Back in the 1980s, there was a big spate of carpet bagging – joining building socieites as a member purely to force the society to demutualise and, in so doing, raking in the spoils of share or cash allocations given to members.

The reason it came about is due to deregulation under Margaret Thatcher of the sector with the introduction of the Building Societies Act in 1986.

The Act allowed Buidling Societies to demutualise and become joint stock banks competing in the wider field of finance.  As per the law of unintended consequences, it also allowed members of the mutuals to force a demutualisation if enough members voted in favour, and many did vote in favour for the rewards of short-term cash bonuses and stock allocations.

As a result, following the Act, many of the larger societies converted into joint stock banking companies beginning with Abbey National in 1989, which was soon followed by the Halifax, the largest society in the sector.

Seeing the rewards on offer to members, others followed – Cheltenham & Gloucester, the Woolwich, Bristol & West, National & Provincial and more – and a cascade affect occurred as speculative carpetbaggers opened savings accounts purely to force the mutual to demutualise, in order to gain a windfall in cash or shares.

People were purely opening accounts with some societies in order to force a vote and gain a quick buck.

The domino tide of demutualisation only stopped when the remaining societies, such as the Nationwide, placed clauses in their rules about how long an account must be held and any profits from demutualisation being given to charity as a defence against the carpetbaggers.

At this point, the process stopped, but the damage was done.

Just take a look at a few key names and you will see why:

  • Halifax Building Society
  • Northern Rock
  • Bradford & Bingley
  • Alliance & Leicester

We all know the story of Northern Rock today – if you don’t, click here – but the others:

  • Halifax created the multibillion pound commercial property headache for Bank of Scotland, who acquired them in 2001, and subsequently for Lloyds;
  • Bradford & Bingley created a massive toxic buy-to-let mortgage portfolio and had to be rescued by the government who sold the branches to Santander;
  • Alliance & Leicester followed in Northern Rock’s shoes, and were forced to sell to Santander in 2008 too.

Some would say that what this shows is that demutualisation led to a share price focus that spawned a sales culture at the expense of customer and staff interests.

Of course, they might say that but I couldn’t possibly comment, as others might say that it was more a reflection of a bunch of sleepy, small financial businesses that could not compete in the cut-throat proprietary markets and hence got swallowed by their larger predators who, in so doing, were infected by their sleepy, small town operations.

You make your own mind up.

From the BSA’s website:

Abbey National

Floated 12 July 1989, acquired by Banco Santander  in November 2004. Abbey rebranded to Santander on 11 January 2010.

Alliance & Leicester

Floated 21 April 1997, acquired by Banco Santander in October 2008. Alliance & Leicester rebranded as Santander in November 2010.

Birmingham Midshires

Taken over by Halifax, April 1999.  Now a division of Lloyds Banking Group.

Bradford & Bingley

Floated 4 December 2000. Mortgage book  nationalised September 2008. Retail savings transferred to  Abbey (Banco Santander) September 2008. Abbey rebranded to Santander on 11 January 2010.  In October 2010 Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc and Bradford & Bingley were integrated under a single holding company, UK Asset Resolution (UKAR). UKAR’s has implemented a business plan that aims to wind down the institutions in a way that maximises taxpayer value for money and repays combined debt to the taxpayer of around £50bn. 

Bristol & West

Taken over by Bank of Ireland, 28 July 1997. Bristol & West transferred its branch network and savings business to Britannia Building Society on 21 September 2005. In January 2009 Bristol & West Mortgages ceased acceptng new customers. Britannia became part of The Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) on 1 August 2009. CFS changed their name to the Co-operative Banking Group in September 2011.

Cheltenham & Gloucester

Taken over by Lloyds Bank, 1 August 1995.  Now exists only as a trading name of the Lloyds Banking Group.        

Halifax

Floated 2 June 1997, merged with Bank of Scotland to form HBOS in 2001.  In September 2008 Lloyds Bank agreed to take over HBOS. It became part of Lloyds Banking Group on 16 January 2009.

National & Provincial

Taken over by Abbey National, 5 August 1996 (ceased trading under this name).

Northern Rock

Floated 1 October 1997. On 22 February 2008, by an order made under the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008, the shares of Northern Rock plc were transferred into temporary public ownership.  On 1 January 2010 Northern Rock was split into two separate entities: Northern Rock plc, a new savings and mortgage bank authorised as a mortgage lender by the FSA; and Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc. On 17 November 2011 the Chancellor announced the sale of Northern Rock plc to Virgin Money and the sale was completed on 1 January 2012. Virgin Money plan to rebrand all Northern Rock branches as Virgin Money during 2012.  The Government has no plans to sell Northern Rock Asset Management. In October 2010 Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc and Bradford & Bingley were integrated under a single holding company, UK Asset Resolution (UKAR). UKAR’s has implemented a business plan that aims to wind down the institutions in a way that maximises taxpayer value for money and repays combined debt to the taxpayer of around £50bn.

Woolwich

Floated 7 July 1997, taken over by Barclays Bank in October 2000.  Now exists only as a trading name of Barclays.

These institutions are no longer building societies and should not be referred to as such.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted at 12:48 PM in Case Studies, Credit Crisis, Economics, General, Retail Banking, Risk | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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Things worth reading: the European View (7)

This week's view from Europe, courtesy of Edith Rigler :

Moving to e-procurement can deliver huge savings – European Commission, 20 April 2012 

The Commission estimates the total size of the EU's procurement market at more than 2 trillion euro, so each 5% saved though e-procurement could result in about 100 billion euro of annual savings. But e-procurement is still used in only 5-10% of procurement procedures carried out across the EU.  The Commission proposes to make e-procurement  the standard method of procurement in the EU by mid-2016. It will itself move towards full e-procurement by mid-2015 – one  year ahead of the deadline for Member States.

Credit squeeze in Eastern European  – Handelsblatt, 21 May 2012

Eastern Europe faces a credit squeeze. Western European banks are retrenching as they face problems in their own countries. For example, going forward, Commerzbank will only focus on Poland. Credit demand is extremely low, and the problems of Greek banks with a presence in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria cause concern. The EBRD plans to step in and provide support.

“Geuro” as parallel currency for Greece  – Handelsblatt, 22 May 2012

Deutsche Bank´s chief economist Thomas Mayer has suggested that introducing a parallel currency, called Geuro, could prevent Greece´s exit from the Eurozone and make the country more competitive. Troubled Greek banks would be caught in a European “bad bank”.

“Lost generation” flees  to Germany  – Handelsblatt , 21 May 2012

Youth unemployment in Southern Europe is so high (50% of the under 25s are jobless in Greece and Spain) that there is a flight to Germany where youth unemployment is only 7.9%.  During 2011 the move of young people from Greece to Germany increased by 90%, from Spain by 52% and from Portugal by 28%.

How Jo Ackermann halved Deutsche Bank – Handelsblatt, 21 May 2012

As Joe Ackermann leaves Deutsche Bank at the end of May, investors wonder what his reign accomplished: all in all, losses.  During his term Deutsche shares lost more than half of their value.

German corporates remain optimistic  – Handelsblatt, 21 May 2012

The majority of corporates in Germany feel well prepared for a renewed slow-down of the global economy. About 63% expect revenue growth of at least 10% in 2012, slightly less than last year. They expect the German economy to continue to grow, albeit more slowly than in 2011.

 

 

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Things worth reading: 23rd May 2012

Things we're reading today include:

 

Posted at 07:20 AM in Reading | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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May 22, 2012

Case Study: Barclays Pingit for Consumers and Corporates

There’s a strong dialogue about why new services such as PayPal and Square take off so fast, and the answer is a combination of usability and accessibility.

If something is easy and it works, then it can gain critical mass fast.

That’s true of Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

The more intuitive, accessible, easy and social it is, the more viral it becomes and hence gains mass market fast.

That’s true of Zynga’s games and Youtube’s videos.

And it’s true of mobile payments, which is the secret sauce that Barclays believe they have discovered with Pingit.

Pingit4 Pingit3

I attended the launch of Barclays’ Pingit for Corporates last week, and it proved interesting.

First, for those who aren’t familiar with Pingit, it’s like a PayPal for mobile and offers simple P2P mobile payments whether you are a Barclays customer or not.

Developed internally by Barclays through a private cloud service, it was launched in February and the ad campaign started in April:

What proved interesting in the launch is the speed of use of Pingit.

From day one in February, folks were downloading the app fast – 120,000 in the first five days, over 400,000 by mid-April and 500,000 by May 9th. 

Barclays claimed the number had reached over 700,000 as of May 16th, 80% of which is on iPhones apparently, even though it’s also available on Android.

I’m sure the ads help, and Barclays claim that their social media is helping.

Here’s a screenshot of the Facebook page …

Pingit FB

… that led me to their viral video …

… although it’s not that viral with only 1500 views.

What really helped is that Apple highlighted Pingit as a showcase app, due to its fast download numbers rising, and that #Pingit was the second highest trending topic on twitter the day after launch.

Barclays then said that they were surprised at the uptick in usage volumes, and how the average transaction had been anticipated around the £25 mark but was so far averaging around £75 per transaction.

That surprised me too.

The demographics prove interesting:

  • 29% of users are 18-25 years old;
  • 37% are 26-35;
  • 26% are 35-50; and
  • 7% are over 50.

Now they’re pushing for merchants to offer Pingit via simple QR codes and Corporate Identifiers.

The idea of the Corporate ID is that firms can buy Pingit accounts such that customers just put in “Tesco” or “Waterstones” and the payment is made without needing to know the company’s account numbers or other details.

That’s pretty cool.

Even better is that you can embed all the data you need in a QR code.

So, as you walk past an ad for a charity campaign, hold your phone over the QR code and make an immediate donation.

Or, even better for the utility firms, send out a bill to a customer with a QR code embedded that includes all the payment details and the payment amount.

All the customer needs to do then is hold their phone over the code, check the payment amount is correct and Pingit.

For the corporate, there’s also the added advantage that not only do they get all the customer data back they need – account number, payment details etc – but it is now enriched with the customer’s mobile telephone number for further verification and potential marketing.

Fast, simple and easy … and innovative.

I hadn’t seen such stuff before and certainly not from a UK bank.

The final points really rammed home why this is important.

For a corporate, the idea of a real-time refund is phenomenal.

Imagine an angry customer calls.

“You’ve just taken a direct debit from my account for £175 when it should have been £100, what are you going to do about it you &$%@!”

And the call centre representative replies: “well sir, here’s your £75 back with an extra £25 to say sorry”.

Ping!

And there it is, on your phone, there and then.

A real-tme faster payment refund via mobile.

Lovely-jubbly.

If you need any more convincing, the Barclays teams threw out a couple of research numbers which show that, by 2015:

  • One in three people on Planet Earth will own a smartphone (Parks Associates); and
  • Payments by mobile will be worth $670 billion (Juniper)

So what? 

There are lies, darned lies and statistics.

All I know is that when you have a simple P2P mechanism for mobile payments fit for smartphones that corporates can leverage, then something’s changed.

And it has.

 

The negative bit

Downside #1

As a non-Barclays customer you have to go through a very complex account verification process that involves not only a PayPal like penny drop into your current account with a reference number that you need to enter; but this is followed by a letter to your house via snail mail with another verification number.

OK, OK, I know it’s all secure KYC stuff, but it’s a pain in the arse and will put a lot of people off.

Downside #2

The app is not robust yet, and the latest update froze a lot of people’s phones which is getting negative vibes on the app store. 

Pingit feedback

Teething troubles I know, but it’s not going to help the cause.

Posted at 10:06 AM in Barclays Bank, Case Studies, Innovation, Marketing, Mobile, Numbers, Payments, Technology | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

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Things worth reading: 22nd May 2012

Things we're reading today include ...

 
 

 

Posted at 07:00 AM in Reading | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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