Merry Christmas one and all!

So here it is, dear readers, my last blog post of 2012 (please, no tears, I know it's tough but we will get through this temporary separation)...I took the November/December issue of FStech to press earlier this month and my last day in the office is today. It just remains for me to tie up some loose ends and attend one last work-related Yuletide party and then I'm done for the year.

It's been an eventful 2012 for yours truly. This has been my first full year at the helm of FStech, after joining from sister publication Retail Systems in June 2011. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to hitting the ground running in 2013 with the FStech Awards (shortlist to be sorted when I get back from Christmas break, followed by the judging day in early February and the big night in April...lots to get through). Thanks to all who have supported and worked with the title this year, including Vendorcom's Paul Rodgers for doing a great job of chairing our Payments Technology Conference in November; and those who have agreed to be on the judging panel for the aforementioned awards: Ian Alderton, Chief Information Officer, formerly Corporate Banking, RBS; Simon Barrows, Head of Financial Services, Glue Reply; Simon Burrows, Director, PwC; Glenn Murphy, Head of IT, London & Capital; Richard Norris, IT Director, Cullum Capital Ventures; and Aksana Pekun, Managing Director and Technology Specialist, Altium.

I'm off to eat, drink and be merry. Happy Christmas and here’s to a prosperous 2013!

FIMA 2012 review

Guest blog post by Chris Bradley, Chief Development Officer, IPL

Unsurprisingly, the principle point of discussion at FIMA 2012 was the area of information management and the rise of its importance within the finance sector. With regulatory pressure driving interest – hardly something the finance industry is not used to! – along with the proposed legal entity identifier which is pushing all businesses to have a growing and willing demand for detailed, even real-time, knowledge, information management was a topic that permeated almost every discussion at the three day event in London.

Of course, increasing awareness and debate around this topic can surely only be good news for the industry. There is clear benefit in those in the finance sector now realising that failure to manage data effectively – and therefore conform to legislative and regulatory requirements – can have catastrophic effects, resulting in imprisonment as well as businesses being shut down. After all, where other sectors, such as pharmaceuticals, have been deploying information management systems for some time, in the finance arena it is a surprisingly relatively new concept.

Therefore, the interesting workshops dedicated to information management at FIMA 2012 were very welcome and apt, however these could have held more relevance through cross-industry comparisons. Had these presentations and workshops shown delegates examples of successful deployments of information management systems and processes in a relatively comparative industry, than those who were slightly on the fence about the need for information management would have left with a solid understanding of how such a system can really benefit a business.

On a related note, the drive for organisations to hire a Chief Data Officer was also highlighted at FIMA 2012. It is becoming glaringly apparent that the role of a CIO (largely though their typical experience) is solely to manage IT systems and infrastructure, and information management rarely therefore goes beyond its protection and storage. In order to instead manage data appropriately as a corporate asset, organisations must therefore hire or internally develop an individual to take responsibility and ensure this data governance – a trend I would actively encourage in the near future.

Overall, FIMA 2012 stoked the coals of a rising Information management emphasis within the finance sector. It is apparent that the industry is thankfully now seeing such activity as a necessity. Whether this is through fear of legislative backlash or a drive to improve efficiency and visibility is largely immaterial, provided there is a recognition that a failure to store, manage and use data appropriately is likely to lead to regulatory or customer service-related horror stories being unveiled at FIMA 2013.

2013 FStech Awards: Entry deadline extended

We've extended the entry deadline for the 2013 FStech Awards. New deadline is Friday, 7 December.

The awards, which recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sector, are free to enter and you can put your organisation forward in as many as categories as you wish.

Best of luck to all those who are submitting entries. I know that a number of companies are busy putting together their submissions but are running behind schedule, so hope the deadline extension helps!

NB: Deadline extensions through to Friday, 14th December are also available on request. Drop me a line here for further details.

It was 20 years ago today...

Just received a press release from Asda flagging up that 20 years ago today IBM unveiled the first smartphone. Today, by comparison, a smartphone (from Asda, natch) has 32,000 times the memory capability, half a million times the functions, 25 per cent of the weight and costs seven per cent of the original price.

The very first smartphone was unveiled by IBM at the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas. It was shaped like a brick, weighed more than 1lb (510g), had 1MB of memory, featured a built-in fax and a touchscreen with stylus. In real terms, the 'Simon' would cost £1,104 today.

The original Angler prototype, as it was called, combined a cell phone and PDA into one device, allowing a user to make and receive telephone calls, facsimiles, emails and cellular pages, among other functions. COMDEX show attendees and the press showed notable interest in the device. The day after Angler's debut, USA Today featured a photo on the front page of the Money section showing Frank Canova, Angler's architect, holding the prototype.

BellSouth Cellular initially offered the Simon throughout its 15 state service area for $899 with a two-year service contract or $1099 without a contract. Later in the product's life, BellSouth Cellular reduced the price to $599 with a two-year contract.BellSouth Cellular sold approximately 50,000 units during the product's six months on the market.

The term "smartphone" was not coined until 1997, but because of Simon's features and capabilities, it can lay claim to being the first smartphone. 

Here endeth the lesson...Have a good weekend!

2013 FStech Awards: final call for entries

Time is running out to enter the 2013 FStech Awards. Deadline for entries is Friday, 30 November.

The awards, which recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sector, are free to enter and you can put your organisation forward in as many as categories as you wish.

Now into its 13th year, the event will once again be held at the London Lancaster Hotel (on Thursday, 17 April 2013). RBS, Lloyds Banking Group, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Hastings Direct, Barclaycard/Orange, eToro and BT Unified Trading over the BT Radianz Cloud were among the winners last time around. And I'm sure we'll have another strong shortlist and group of winners in 2013.

Best of luck to all those who are submitting entries!

Barclaycard's toy story

If you were watching The X Factor results show last night (I wasn't, of course. I was watching a particularly obscure arthouse movie) you probably caught the new toy themed Barclaycard PayTag ad.

If you missed it, you can view it here.

Good stuff, liked the idea of the toys vying for the guy's attention. And unlike previous contactless ads, this one effectively sells the idea of paying for something with a tap of your mobile phone.

On a final note, Rylan's Spice Girls medley on The X Factor was something to behold. Not that I saw it. Oh no. I'm just going on what I've read on Twitter. Ahem...

iZettle for cash

Swedish start up iZettle's mini chip-card readers can now be purchased exclusively in 297 of EE’s UK stores and from its telesales channel.

The tie up is aimed at the country’s small businesses and tradespeople who will be able to turn their smartphones and tablets into m-payments terminals. Read the full story at FStech Online.

The company arrived in the UK this week, hosting a flashy press event at the Royal Festival Hall to trumpet its partnership with EE. I've just been reading a piece on the launch by BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, which you can find here. Have a look at some of the comments ("iZettle for cash" etc etc). Fair to say that the Great British Public aren't hugely impressed and that they still value cash, as much as the card schemes and banks would wish it otherwise.

How Bacon rolls

So, the new Everything Everywhere/Kevin Bacon advert...This launched over the weekend, debuting during The X Factor on ITV to promote the UK’s first 4G mobile and fibre broadband service.

The ad riffs on the infamous six degrees of Kevin Bacon concept and sees the actor telling the audience how he's linked to people from all over the world, including Tom Hanks, Frank Carson and Ken Barlow from Coronation Street. The key message being, you can also be just like him by joining a connected network.

You can view the ad here. At one point, Kev wanders into a pub and tells us that in the future we'll be able to pay for pork scratchings by simply tapping our mobiles on terminals. 'Contactless launching in 2013' then appears on screen in very, very small writing for two seconds. The ad is mildly amusing, I'll give it that, but one thing bugs me. As I watched it, I could picture a bunch of ad execs in a flashy office somewhere in Soho, high fiving eachother, pleased at how terribly clever they are. I know contactless is only part of the proposition but it's a potentially significant part. And this ad does little to communicate the benefits to the man and woman in the street.

Last week at the 2012 FStech/Retail Systems Payments Technology Conference, the chairman, Vendorcom’s Paul Rodgers, commented: “99.9 per cent of the general public don’t know what a digital wallet is. They also think that the contactless logo is a hearing loop sign. A lot needs to be done in terms of education and communication.”

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, the industry as a whole continues to be stuck in expensive vanity project mode (remember the 'all style, no substance' contactless rollercoaster ad from a couple of years ago?)

2012 FStech/Retail Systems Payments Technology Conference: next week!

Final shout for the 2012 FStech/Retail Systems Payments Technology Conference, which takes place next week (Thursday, 01 November) at the IoD Hub, London.

This will bring together leading figures from retail and the financial services sector to network and discuss cards and payments services, the present and future. This year, there will be a particular focus on mobile banking and payments. Senior figures from across the retail, financial services, technology vendor and telco sectors will come together to debate the key issues, innovations and barriers to the mass-market deployment of mobile.

Chaired by Vendorcom chairman, Paul Rodgers, the conference, a mixture of speaker presentations and discussion panels, will also showcase the latest developments and services and products in such areas as: contactless cards, alternative payments, the future of cash and social payments.

Speakers/panelists will include:

Derek White, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Barclays

Jonathan Vaux, Senior Vice President, Head of UK Market Strategy, Visa Europe

Richard Johnson, Group Strategy Director, Monitise

Ron Delnevo, Managing Director, Bank Machine

Simon Burrows, Director – FinTech, PwC

Paul Makin, Head of Mobile Money, Consult Hyperion

Mark McMurtrie, Director, Payments Consultancy Limited

Simon Barrows, Head of Financial Services, Glue Reply

Ken Cregan, Financial Services Principal, Capgemini Consulting

Gerry Kelliher, Senior Director, UK & Ireland Sales Operations, Research in Motion

Kristian Thure Sørensen, Board Member, Mobey Forum, Senior Manager, Mobile Payments and eCommerce, Nets

The conference is free to retailers and FS organisations. To book your place, visit: http://www.fstech.co.uk/payments/booking_form.php

The consumerisation of private banking

The recent announcement that personal finance service, Nutmeg, has launched private banking-like services for all, only shows how few industries are immune to the trend of ‘consumerisation’. We have seen it unfold in the business sphere, with Bring Your Own Device policies, social networking and collaborative trends influencing existing working models and spawning completely new businesses and ways of working, but now it is increasingly making in-roads into the banking and financial sectors.

Banks have already started tailoring their customer communications to suit the individual’s preference. This includes developing and harnessing multiple channels of communication for customers to pick and choose how they wish to engage. From traditional letter and phone-based interaction to online and social media, many financial institutions are embracing new ways of working. Many mortgage brokers or bank managers will now use tablets to show the customer the different options available, making the experience more intuitive and akin to their own experiences at home.

This consumerisation drive is only set to increase and private banking is a surprising, if inevitable, next step along this journey. The likes of Nutmeg, but also PayPal, Square, Google Wallet and others are examples of disintermediation, whereby the retailer is removed from the chain between the producer and the consumer, offering time and cost savings in delivery. It is thanks to the rise of the internet and online-based services, as well as this consumerisation trend that the industry is facing a shake-up and retail banks facing disintermediation need to be agile in how they respond.

Private banking has traditionally been exclusive and relatively expensive, which is why it was until recently the domain of large companies and the extremely wealthy. However, as retail banking faces increasingly challenging times – subject not only to a difficult economic market but also to ever stringent regulations and restrictions – private banking and wealth management are emerging growth areas that can help large banks protect some of their eroding margins.

In all areas of banking, but especially in private banking, trust is vital. As long as all players, including newer ones, are FSA regulated and can offer more transparent and flexible services that are more easily accessible than other existing banking players, it will cause positive competitive tension in an extremely lucrative market.

The consumerisation of private banking is a young market, but has huge potential. The question to ask, however, is whether consumer demand for it exists yet.

Guest blog post by Cognizant's Tony Virdi.

I support Little Miss Geek

This week I have mostly been reading Little Miss Geek, Bridging The Gap Between Girls And Technology.

In the book, Belinda Parmar, aka Lady Geek, highlights that only 17 per cent of technology jobs are held by women and that number is continuing to shrink. She also outlines a series of steps for bridging the gap between women and technology.

Excellent stuff, punchy and informative, passionate but reasoned. You can buy a copy via Amazon.

Further info on Lady Geek here.

2013 FStech Awards update

A few 2013 FStech Awards announcements for you.

The judging panel will include:
Simon Barrows, Head of Financial Services, Glue Reply
Simon Burrows, Director, PwC
Glenn Murphy, Head of IT, London & Capital
Richard Norris, IT Director, Cullum Capital Ventures
Aksana Pekun, Managing Director and Technology Specialist, Altium


Further judges to be announced in the near future.


You can follow the event on Twitter.


Details on how to enter, deadlines etc can be found here.

Modern trends in improving customer experience in banks

Guest blog post by Gideon Hollander, CEO, Jacada

The banking sector is to be commended for being pioneers in embracing new technology in the field of customer self-service. It was the banks who first pushed the boundaries of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and web self-service or, online banking as it’s now known, which ensured getting account balances and making payments over the phone and web become a common household experience.

However, given this propensity to innovate, it will be interesting to see how the banking sector will harness mobile devices in the customer service field, particularly the smartphone. Additionally, with latest figures suggesting that 22 per cent of mobile finance users access content from their bank almost every day, this demographic is shifting from online banking to mobile banking, and consumers will soon expect to do all aspects of their banking via a mobile device.

Customers now expect to be able to reach your organisation anytime, and expect an instant and meaningful response from your organisation instantly and 24/7. If not, it’s simple; with consumer perceptions of the banking sector already at an all time low, and customer loyalties eroding with the countless incentives for people to switch banks, bank customers will simply take their business elsewhere!

This new mobile self-service channel offers banks an unprecedented opportunity to provide an improved self-service experience. Plus, given the exponential growth in smartphones, it’s vital that banks evolve their customer self-service strategy to incorporate mobile technology, and do it fast. And yet, while banks are once again pioneers in the field, the true power of mobile has not fully been realised. For many banking organisations, their mobile strategy has not yet evolved much beyond treating it similar to a web self-service channel.

For all its merits, existing web self-service is limited when a customer needs to speak with someone. The moment the transaction becomes complicated and requires customer service assistance, the user experience totally breaks down. There is no continuity between the web channel and the voice channel. As a result, when the call comes in to the customer service agent, there is no continuity and the transaction has to start from the beginning again, resulting in increased call handle times (increased costs to the Bank) and increased customer frustration.

By properly adopting mobile as the new engagement channel, the opportunity exists for banks to break down those silos and provide a seamless connection between their self-service organisation and customer care organisation.

Mobile enables customers to engage in a self-service session through an app that visually maps out the steps of the banking organisation’s customer service process, including the IVR. Customers are in control and able to visually journey through the app, with full support for data entry and sophisticated self-service capabilities. These sessions can proactively extract knowledge and retrieve or update customer information from back end business applications instantly. This gives your customer controlled access in real-time, resulting in more effective problem resolution.

Many customers prefer to interact with a visual IVR on their phone, which includes the ability to easily enter alphanumeric data. This level of interaction enables customers to enter pin-codes and pass-codes in a way that they are already familiar with from unlocking their phones, helping to increase security and authentication. The banks can also benefit from this as features such as a customer ID is enhanced. Additionally, banks can provide customers with a more personalised experience, customising content relevant specifically for them, therefore enabling increased cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

There’s no getting away from it, there will always be a need for agent assistance in some interactions, so the goal has to be to provide a seamless transition to the voice channel from the self-service channel. Cutting edge mobile customer service technologies enable all the steps traversed by the customer, as well as any data entered, to be visible to the agent. This eliminates customers having to repeat information enabling more effective problem solving and a shorter call.

These self-service sessions extend far beyond the capabilities of a traditional IVR or web self-service interaction as mobile can leverage the inherent capabilities of the device, thereby dramatically innovating and improving the customer experience. New apps and mobile wallet technologies are being launched all the time by the banks and operators.

Mobile devices will become the largest engagement channel for customers, and banks have an incredible opportunity to be technology pioneers once again. Additionally, banks can differentiate themselves in the customer service arena, now more than ever, by utilising innovative customer service and banking apps. Today, around one in every four of bank customers owns a smartphone, and according to leading analysts, in a year or two it’s likely that this figure will be three out of four.

The latest figures from the US are even more worrying for the banks that have hit the headlines this year for all the wrong reasons; around 50 per cent of mobile finance users will stick with a brand and user experience that they like. With that in mind, banks really do need to adopt a mobile self-service strategy that engages customers sooner rather than later, or risk losing this dynamic mobile customer. The question is will you be ready for them?

The one and only

Flicking through The Indie yesterday I came across an Orange ad with the heading: Pay for things with the Samsung Galaxy S III, only on Orange.

It went on to mention that this is the only phone that lets you make contactless payments (no doubt with a nod to the previous week's announcement that the new iPhone would not be NFC-enabled).

Thought for the day: with one phone on the market, it's hardly surprising that mobile payments have yet to take off, is it?

Not your typical bank statement

I'm liking the Tesco Bank 'Not your typical bank statement' advertisement which has been doing the rounds this week.

If you haven't seen it, click here.

'Nuff said.

On the subject of retail banking, I'm just about to start work on our November/December issue (last issue of the year already. Eep! Time does fly) which includes a retail banking supplement. Features on branch banking, mobile banking and the future of retail banking. If any of these features tickle your fancy, drop me a line. Contact details can be found on the FStech website.

Have a good weekend!

The iPhone 5...bigger, better but...

...No NFC or mobile wallet. When asked why Apple chose not to include NFC, Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, commented: "It's not clear that NFC is the solution to any current problem."

I'm not sure I disagree. How about you guys? On that subject, Martin Cox – Bell ID’s Global Head of Sales, has posted an interesting blog entitled 'Has Apple signalled the demise of NFC?’

You can read it here.

FStech Awards: FAQs

Following on from my blog post of last week, flagging up the launch of the 2013 FStech Awards...

Every year, I receive a number of emails and calls from companies who want to enter but have one or two queries. So I've decided to list a few FAQs. Hope this helps. If your query isn't covered, feel free to drop me a line. My contact details can be found here.

The nominated project should have been launched or come to fruition in 2012/2013.

The awards recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sector. The nominated organisation doesn't have to be based in the UK or EMEA, but they must have a presence there.

It’s free to enter and you can put your organisation forward in as many as categories as you wish.

We welcome nominations from anyone who has responsibility for information technology management or strategy within a financial institution, or from technology suppliers, press officers, PRs or consultants representing them.

A previous winning entry can be found here. Look to use this as a style guide for submissions.

If you're interested in being part of the judging panel, that's great, get in touch, although please note that we look for people from financial institutions, consultants and analysts, not tech vendors.

Thanks and best of luck to all those who enter this time around.