Parveen Bansal speaks to Dr Angus Porter about Abbey’s strategy to change the face of banking in the UK.
With a PhD in metallurgy and with marketing and executive management experience gained at Mars Confectionery and British Telecom, Dr Angus Porter is new to the financial services industry. In June last year he joined Abbey as customer propositions director.

Douglas Beckett, regional head of consumer banking at Standard Chartered explains the bank’s strategy in Africa, following its recent re-entry into South Africa and Nigeria. By Parveen Bansal.
With its roots in both Asia and Africa, Standard Chartered Bank has emerged in the past 150 years as a leading financial institution in these markets. The present-day bank is the product of a 1969 merger between Standard Bank of South Africa and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, the latter being the older institution, having been founded in 1835 following the grant of a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria.

Paul Caplin, founder of Caplin Systems, discusses in which direction he sees the trading world moving, with special regard to data networks. Interview by Parveen Bansal.

Application service providers – hailed as the next big thing in 1990s – failed to live up to their press. Now, however, small and medium-sized organisations are realising the benefits ASPs canoffer. Parveen Bansal reports.

Are banks’ IT systems providing value or are they effectively brain dead? This month our technology editor, Parveen Bansal, considers how little banks get back from their huge investment in IT and what can be done to improve it. Financial sector reform is also high on the agenda of Asian Development Bank president Tadao Chino who insists it is key to sustaining high growth across the region. And in Malaysia, Maybank’s chief executive, Amirsham Aziz, discusses corruption, Havana nightclubs and the upcoming elections.

Technology spend by financial institutions continues to rise despite an apparently poor track record of producing value for money. Parveen Bansal explains why success can only occur when technology, processes and people share the same goals and objectives.

With more than three-quarters of Qatar’s population come from overseas, Doha Bank is focusing on expatriate customers, says Parveen Bansal.
With energy needs expanding worldwide and oil prices remaining high, the Qatari economy is booming. Under the prudent leadership of His Highness Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani, the state’s development strategy is focusing on diversification of the economy away from oil, toward extensive gas reserves and industrial expansion. Oil and natural gas revenues enable Qatar to have a per capita income not far below the leading industrial countries in western Europe.

Mitchel Lenson, CIO for technology and operations at Deutsche Bank, tells Parveen Bansal that he sees his role as the “conscience” of the organisation when it comes to technology spending – forcing people to think more about the decisions they make.

How should banks meet the challenge of growing competition from retailers for financial services? And where should their technology priorities lie? Bill Hartnett, financial services manager at Microsoft, gives Parveen Bansal some pointers.
Software giant Microsoft is well known not only in the consumer world, but it has also made serious inroads into the financial services sector, where it commands the majority market share in the server and desktop computer operating systems areas.

Once touted as the next big thing, customer relationship management
failed to deliver. Now data warehousing is helping it to fulfil its
initial promise. Parveen Bansal explains how.