It is high time that retail banks stopped thinking of electronic channels as extensions of the branch and started thinking about the electronic structure as the foundation upon which all the channels, including the branch, are built. By Chris Skinner.

If banks really do want to resuscitate personal mobile banking – and they’re spending huge sums doing so – they should look to the internet-based web service to prevent customer angst at the sky-high mobile phone charges. By Chris Skinner.

Although biology is a well-known science, there is a lesser-known science with the a deceptively similar name: buyology. I created this science for banks to deal with the new world of ‘freakonomics’, where everyone is struggling to understand the methods to get customers buying and, in its purest form, buyology is defined as: the science of understanding business relationships.

The lessons of the losses experienced by Lloyd’s of London in the 1980s were overlooked by banks embroiled in the subprime crisis, who recklessly issued vast amounts of collateralised debt obligations. By Chris Skinner.

Chief information officers complain that no one else in the business, least of all CEOs, realises that information is a core risk for a bank and must be managed. The best way is with the co-operation of the chief risk officer, says Chris Skinner.

Last year, there was a big buzz about a book by Chris Anderson called The Long Tail, which describes the phenomenon of internet retailing. The concept is that traditional shops have a physical limit on shelf capacity so, for example, a music store can only stock as many titles as its physical space allows.

All the talk of dealers and brokers giving up the ghost as a result of technology, regulation and margins is pure balderdash. They will take a leaf out of IFAs’ book by working harder to justify their existence and becoming more sought after.
By Chris Skinner.

The sky is the limit when it comes to the power of the chip – and size is certainly everything. Imagine a device as big as a flea that carries a complete biometric identity management system of your clients. By Chris Skinner.

The inexorable advances in storage capacity of simple-to-use USB devices makes bank databases increasingly vulnerable, and internal firewalls as well as devicewalls increasingly necessary.By Chris Skinner.

The drive for achieving ever-faster trade execution speeds in capital markets means that any glitch, gremlin or gulp will lead to serious consequences in terms of lost business and margin erosion. This makes the technologist’s role ever more vital. By Chris Skinner.