The Financial Services Club's Blog

Banks designed for humans by geeks

I was going to move away from further debate about branch and omnichannel today, as there’s far more interesting stuff about Google giving payments away for free with Gmail and PayPal doing the same with mobile, but that will have to wait until next week as yesterday’s post created quite a stir.

I guess it was the mention of Apple (whose glossy rosy tint has reduced of late).

Or maybe it is that core message about designing for humans rather than money.

In fact, I did toy with the idea of Banks designed for humans, not geeks as a title, as the techno crowd fall into the same fervent misnomer as the branch crowd.

Equally, most get this wrong because they built their operations for one point of emphasis – branch, call centre, internet – and now are struggling because no longer do we deal with channels, we deal with a human at their point of need or want or desire or thought.

This is what the data geeks are really drilling down for: to get to the customer 24*7 as they have financial needs, wants, desires and thoughts, and that is why today's title is Banks designed for humans by geeks. 

The augmented economy

In the middle of my showreel, I talk about augmented  lifestyles.  I’ve talked about this for many years, but now it is becoming an augmented reality, especially with the launch of Google Glass.

Creating an agile, designer IT Shop from a CIO who knows how

Time to head home after a day in India at the launch of the new design centre for finance launched by Polaris Financial Technology in Chennai (Madras for the old folks out there).

As you walk into the Design Centre, you are greeted by a map of the world ... completely made out of Indian Rupees!

A fascinating trip, not least because Polaris has injected something into software development that I have not seen before: creativity.

This was clearly demonstrated by Michael Harte, CIO of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).

Over the past five years, he has replaced the bank's core systems, moved much of the banks services to the cloud, created many apps and innovations that have given CBA global recognition and more.  

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?

How do you implement a strategy that works?

A good friend of mine, Robin Speculand, recently spoke to our Financial Services Club in London about implementation. 

It was a popular night, primarily because implementing strategy is really difficult.  In fact, coming up with a good strategy in the first place is a major challenge then, having got a strategy, getting the organisation behind the strategy and implementing the darned thing is even harder.  Yet, according to Robin’s annual survey of organisations, most companies are engaged in developing new strategies and four out of five people believe their company are good at developing new strategies … but the majority of people think they are bad at implementing strategies.

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.

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.

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.

Money is meaningless

I’ve blogged and presented about this subject many times before, so rather than repeating all that, here’s a summation with a new twist.

Money is meaningless because we no longer deal in money.

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.”