As trading volumes rise inexorably, banks face a pressing need to develop trading platforms that meet demand. But is the quest for the all-singing, all-dancing trading system a folly doomed to end in costly failure? Dan Barnes surveys the scene.

Jon Saxe, CIO at Morgan Stanley, tells Dan Barnes that he regards system reliability as a crucial strand of operations and that hardware should not be allowed to dictate the speed of innovation.

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.

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.