The Financial Services Club's Blog

Sir Ranulph Fiennes caught trying to rob a bank

Like others in the conference hall, I felt a sense of awe as the world’s greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph ‘Ran’ Fiennes, took to the stage to recount some of the stories about his life and travels, including the day he was in court over trying to rob a bank. 

Bank customers: vulnerable victims or gullible gimps?

I must admit, having listened to Jeremy Roe regarding banks mis-selling swaps contracts along with Which? and the leader of bank employee union Unite talking about how general staff and customers feel about mis-selling, I’m a little bit cynical.

Have banks behaved badly or are customers a little bit stupid?

The UK's new bank regulator: Andrew Bailey

For the second time recently, I got to hear the thoughts of Andrew Bailey, CEO of the new Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation at the Bank of England.

This time was at the annual dinner for the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Edinburgh. 

If you thought PPI was costly, wait till you see the price of this scandal

We had a fascinating insight into the issue of swaps mis-selling from Jeremy Roe last night at the Financial Services Club.

Jeremy was a victim of the process and has been championing the cause ever since.  He now counts 1,200 companies in his group, Bully Banks, out of the 40,000 cases that have been identified so far.

It does not sound like much, but if each case averages £2.5 million compensation, this is a £100 billion exposure and is far bigger than the PPI mis-selling scandal we all know about already.

Why would it be so much?

Why ALL banks will change core systems

There's a theme that keeps cropping up at most conferences I attend around the remodelling of banks.

It came up again today in a discussion about data leverage at the Asian Banker Summit, and it occurred to me again recently, when I chaired the future focused day at IPS 2013.

The theme is how do you turn a vertically integrated business that owns the customer process end-to-end and organises itself around products and channels, into a horizontally structured business that wants to provide functionality to the customer at their point of need and organises themselves around the customer’s data.

That’s a long sentence and, for those who get this, it will make perfect sense.

This is why I wouldn’t bother writing anything further, except that this is so fundamental to the dialogue we’re having that I feel the need to break it down step-by-step.

Some fintech firms' marketing stinks

There’s an old saying that cropped up the other day in respect of Margaret Thatcher’s son, Mark. It was a joking reference by Margaret that her son was so clever he could sell “snow to eskimos or sand to Arabs” or, as one wag put it, arms to anyone.

Anyways, it’s a message worth remembering as most fintech companies could not sell sand to eskimos, snow to Arabs or guns to anyone, as they have no idea how to market or sell their wares.

How to create a killer strategy

There are several examples of the ages of man.

The one that I got from an American friend is learning, earning and burning.

You spend your early years learning, your main years earning and your latter years burning the wealth you generated.

I kinda prefer learning, earning and moaning.

Anyways, why mention this?

New York frickin' City

Just spent the weekend in New York City, or New York frickin’ City as the locals say.

When they say this, they are of course referring to the great industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick who left them this wonderful museum of art.

Banks only survive because of regulations

We recently celebrated the two hundredth birthday of Charles Darwin. 

Darwin, the man who broke through the prejudiced views of the religious world of the Victorian era by being brave enough to say we were descended from apes and not created by God.

You've been bacefooked

Building upon the theme that you cannot have privacy, even if you are a cybercriminal or cybersecurity expert, you cannot have privacy if you are a social media aficionado.

And no greater illustration of the social media aficionado is there than Mark Zuckerburg, uberfacebook leader of the world.

A man with over a billion followers, and a man with over a billion dollars.

You would think that a social media billionaire could keep things secret … but no.

Zuckerberg is the leakiest person I know.

How to catch a cybercriminal

Growing up in 21^st century is wondrous, amazing and fun.

You can connect to everyone on the planet.

You can find friends from Tokyo to Timbuktu.

You can catch an airplane like your dad caught a bus.

You can pay carry a roomful of music around in your pocket and watch movies through the air.

You can even pay for things without paper!

Wow!

Hasn’t the world changed a lot?

And yes, it’s going to change a whole lot more as everything becomes wirelessly connected.

But there’s a flaw to all of this.

Bank trust is at an all time low

I recently hosted a meeting of financial market players to talk about how to rebuild trust in banking. 

It was an interesting evening, with most of the attendees accepting that trust in banks was at an al-time low. 

But how low is an all-time low?

Capitalism is dead, long live capitalism

Following on from my previous two polemics:

• Stop talking about mobile, it's not important; and
• Money is meaningless

I’m now moving on to the final contentious point which is that capitalism is dead.

We all knew that capitalism died in 2008 when the crisis hit, or at least the Anglo-Saxon version of capitalism that was all based upon selfish greed.

The self-serving focus of modern society was evident throughout the last decade, and no more so than the unexpurgated world of me.

That has changed and is changing.

Try to destroy yourself … and then do it

One of the panellists at this week’s conference said that he employed twenty people whose sole duty was to find a way to destroy the business.

I liked the idea of that.  It is a strong and emotive statement.  But what did he mean?

“I employ twenty people in my innovation department who purely look at ways in which they could destroy the current business.”

RETAIL (????) Banking ... you must be joking!

I was at a conference yesterday where a leading economist talked about the global economic forecasts and specifically about the UK.

When he got to the UK, he started talking about which sectors were expanding and succeeding the most, citing the telecommunication, transport and logistics areas as those with the greatest opportunity.

In other words, people doing business on the internet and ordering stuff for delivery to the home or office.

Fifty Shades of Law: America, Banking and World War III

No, it’s not about flagellation and sado-masochism, although the current regulatory regime is not far off that.  It’s also true that the regulatory regime is pretty mind-boggling these days, with fifty shades of interpretation of fifty shades of law.   This was made clear to me in dialogue with a group of European banks involved in the LIBOR fixing program last week. 

We were talking about the likely implications of American regulatory retaliation, and they made it clear to me that the United States is using LIBOR and money laundering as pure extortion from foreign banks to bolster their political coffers.

That sounds a bit extreme, but it made some sense as the conversation developed.

In deep waters

Back to reality and what’s happening in the world today.

I received a bunch of stats and facts from one of my readers last week lookiing at public (governmental) debt across various countries and geographies, and comparing internal debt (money borrowed within country) with external debt (money borrowed from overseas).

Here’s the low-down.

2013: Five Key Banking Bets

After discussing the economic backdrop, with a hot South America countering a consumerising Asia, it’s time to move on to looking specifically at the banking outlook, which is grim.

Or is it?

2013: an Economic Outlook

OK, OK, it’s time to get down to the real business of blogging, banking and bonuses.  As per my usual form, here are four specific forecasts for the economic movements of 2013:

1. The USA is a solid rock (but)
2. South America is the place to be
3. China becomes a hot consumer market
4. The Eurozone stays together with fissures, cracks and holes

Were Skinner’s 2012 predictions correct?

At the start of the year, I always make a few predictions about what will happen in the following year.  Watch this blog in January for 2013’s predictions.  But what were the predictions for 2012?

Well Economically, I made the following forecasts:

1. Asia’s light continues to shine, but not quite as bright
2. American equities is the place to invest
3. There will be a major European bank failure
4. A country will leave the Eurozone