Wendy Atkins looks at how credit cards can help both governments and corporations to save money and time, while keeping tabs on overall spending in a transparent, auditable way.

Financial services institutions embraced customer knowledge technologies in the mid-1990s. Customer relationship management (CRM) is more than a technology. It is a very specific business strategy that seeks to identify customers individually and then craft sales and service strategies that are uniquely appropriate for each customer.

On the surface, the investment banking and technology markets have little in common but both have complex terminologies that few people outside the industry understand. In the investment community, you have things Greek, like NOSTRO, SPEs and so on. Technology has an equally complicated array of terminology and three that are worth being aware of are Wiki, SOA and XML.

Self-service banking means more than withdrawing cash. Stephen Timewell talks to bankers about the future of the ATM – its potential as a promotional device and use via mobile phone and the internet.

Identity fraud is on the rise, but financial institutions are fighting back with a joint initiative designed to highlight the problem and improve staff training. Michael Imeson reports.

The Royal Bank of Canada’s merging of its IT and operations departments for retail and wholesale business is already paying dividends, CIO Marty Lippert tells Dan Barnes.
Marty Lippert’s recent decision to merge IT and operations departments from the retail and investment wholesale sides together was driven by the need to execute. The overarching strategy is what Mr Lippert, CIO at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), calls the “client first initiative”.

Michael Imeson reports on The Banker’s briefing on business continuity management.
HSBC has been struck with its share of disasters in the past two years. Its Istanbul HQ was bombed by Islamic fundamentalists in 2003, and operations in the Cayman Islands were suspended for days following Hurricane Ivan last September.
There have been other less spectacular incidents too, but in most cases the bank’s business continuity management (BCM) plans worked.

In recent years, banks have coped with global economic downturns by cutting costs. Continuing budget pressures have accelerated the contraction of spending on IT maintenance.

Banks have not got the hang of seeing things from the customer’s point of view despite various attempts to institute customer-oriented service policies. Can they afford to continue this way? By Chris Skinner.

Fraud has been keeping people awake at night over the last month – and for once it is not just the victims.
Microsoft is in court having filed lawsuits against 117 unnamed defendants accusing them of using e-mails or web pages to try to secure information from unsuspecting members of the public in order to get financial details.