The European Commission wants to boost efficiency in the mortgage market by creating a single European market for the sector. But care needs to be taken in establishing such a market, which must be free and open.

ING Direct is a prime example of success in direct banking. Its competitive edge comes from keeping costs low, measuring its performance at every level of customer contact and relying on a real-time, integrated core banking system.

Cutting costs while improving customer service may sound contradictory, yet that’s what a number of organisations are claiming can be achieved if banks adopt their systems.Wendy Atkins reports.

The European payments environment is going through major upheaval. This presents cross-border opportunities for some banks and the prospect of takeover for others, writes Chris Skinner.

Michael Sanchez, chairman, international division, at Fidelity Information Services, looks at banks’ reluctance to change core systems and explains that although there are risks, they can be managed.

Customers have a wide range of multi-sector providers to choose from and banks that are slow to upgrade their technology systems may lose clients to other industries, reports Guillermo Kopp.

Retailers are now a major force in banking: banks are using retail techniques to attract customers and hiring people from the retail sector to help them develop mass-market appeal; and some big retailers have established themselves as competent purveyors of financial services. Michael Imeson reports.

Banking institutions worldwide are finding that much of the back-office technology employed today is no longer adequate for meeting the existing and future business demands on bankers.Frank Sanchez reports.

Algorithmic trading systems are an increasingly popular weapon with which banks aim to annihilate the competition.Dan Barnes explains.

In today’s environment, where news reports of consumer-related phishing attacks are a daily occurrence, banks’ retail banking units might examine the experience of their counterparts in corporate electronic banking, which have managed either largely to avoid instances of significant financial loss as a result of unauthorised access to corporate electronic banking systems since 1994 or to keep such incidents private.