Although mobile banking services might appear to hold significant promise as an e-payment method, their development has so far failed to live up to expectations. Wendy Atkins reports.

Banking business is showing renewed strength globally. An analysis of revenue velocity in selected banking institutions in the first half of 2004 reveals a healthy growth rate of 17% over the same period in 2003.

A range of reports have highlighted the fact that many banks will be losing money on their payments business by the end of the decade. These reports put such trends down to growing customer demands, increasing regulation and rising costs of technology to manage payment processes. If banks cannot make a profit out of money transmissions – their core business – how will they make it?

Grid technology underlies many of the utility models of computing mooted to revolutionise industry. It is being put to use in financial services organisations and in some cases already providing compute power as a utility. Dan Barnes reports.

JP Rangaswami, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein’s (DrKW) global chief information officer, welcomes an exciting new opportunity with the reinvention of information technology. Interview by Dan Barnes.

Massimo Arrighetti, head of retail at Italy’s Banca Intesa, talks to Stephen Timewell about the earthquake in his bank’s retail sector that has led not only to a radical rethink, but also to a step change in processes.
When Banco Ambrosiano Veneto, Cariplo and Banca Commerciale Italiana joined forces in late 2002 to form the largest bank in Italy, Banca Intesa, they also formed a bank with a staggering 1,500 different retail products.

A swathe of outsourcing deals has seen global custodians moving into the middle offices of investment managers – and even edging towards the front offices. However, Frances Maguire finds that the global custodians are not taking their own advice on outsourcing.
The custody market has already undergone a great deal of consolidation. Several Tier 1 banks have sold up their custody arms to one of the banks that now make up the top five largest global custodians, as custody was deemed a product offering that needed both scale and to be part of a wider business relationship to be profitable (see news story on Citigroup’s purchase of ABN Amro’s custody operation).

A surge of regulatory reporting mandates on risk and compliance is challenging financial services institutions to articulate approaches to integrate common business processes and IT capabilities across the enterprise.

It is surprising to think that in less than two years, the internet has gone from being an essential corporate asset to being a pain in the neck. According to IT research and analysis provider Gartner, 57 million adults in the US received a fraudulent e-mail as of May 2004.

Maestro UK’s Roger Alexander explains to Stephen Timewell how, as e-commerce develops, banks can reposition themselves as authenticators via debit cards, and charge customers for the service.