Parveen Bansal talks to Bertrand Lavayssičre, head of Capgemini’s Global Financial Services Sector and managing director of Financial Services North American Region.
Speaking with extensive experience on consulting and IT in financial services, Bertrand Lavayssičre shares Capgemini’s view on the main issues in the financial services industry and their possible solutions. He highlights three key issues that continue to plague retail banks: creating customer loyalty, integrating different channels and, in particular, the need to reduce back office costs.

An improbable mix of coincidence, personal ingenuity and innovative technology gave Iraq a sorely needed payments system.

The progression towards commercial banks marking their loans to market seems almost inevitable, says Sophie Roell in New York. A new tool from Moody’s KMV can help banks to price loans and, more importantly, could help them with value management.

Few institutions are able to implement strategic programmes for dealing with new regulatory and governance regimes and this has a greater negative impact on smaller organisations, says Anthony Gandy.

SAS HAS created SAS 9, an intelligence platform to help companies do more with their data and systems. The system ensures that more people – from the factory floor to the boardroom – can use the enhanced predictive analytics and data management capabilities of SAS 9 to help solve critical business pains. The SAS 9 Intelligence Platform is the most significant technology change in SAS’s history.

With a raft of legislation bearing down upon the banking industry, technological change is on the agenda. So, more than ever, executive committees must take responsibility to ensure that the change is a successful one, says Chris Skinner.

In an increasingly interconnected world, large financial services institutions (FSIs) are already sourcing their IT and business process services from a variety of international locations. As outsourcing services have evolved from filling tactical gaps to providing strategic cost and quality advantages as well as innovative features, FSIs are tapping supplementary alternatives to India as a location for offshore outsourcing.