Twitter steals march on Facebook in FS sector

Has Facebook had its day? That was the question I put to my many (ahem) Twitter followers recently. "Timeline looks clunky and there are only so many pics you wanna see of friends pulling amusing faces in the pub," I tweeted.

It certainly seems to be on the slide in the financial services sector. According to analysis from Corporate Insight, Twitter has overtaken Facebook to be become the top social network for FS firms. It covered 90 companies in its report, 57 per cent of which used Facebook in 2010 and 51 per cent Twitter. But by the end of 2011, 88 per cent were on the former and 92 per cent on the latter.

At one point, Facebook could do no wrong, but it's no longer a media darling. Take, for example, the bemused response to the $1 billion purchase of Instagram, perhaps best summed up by a spoof news piece in the latest Private Eye. Sample quotes: "Instascam's business model was founded on the belief that if we had a trendy name and could show that we had no way of generating profit, Facebook would eventually buy us for some ridiculous price." And: "Mark Zuckerberg denied he'd overpaid for Instascam saying he'd been impressed by the way the company had generated huge amounts of hype in the past two years."

For more info on the Corporate Insight research, click here.

Like-for-like

Regular readers of this blog (there are some of you out there, I'm sure of it!) will know that I used to be Editor of FStech's sister title, Retail Systems.

I recently had lunch with a contact from my retail days and somewhat inevitably conversation turned to retail technology vs FS technology. "I'd imagine there is a lot less innovation in the financial services sector than there is in retail," said the contact, his logic being that, with many of the big financial institutions, it's a case of throwing large amounts of cash at  legacy transformation projects. Retailers, on the other hand, have less money to play with and so sweat the small stuff, which is where true innovation lies.

Regular readers will also know that the 2012 FStech Awards took place last month. It was my first awards and it was interesting to compare the entries to those received during my time as head of the judging panel for the Retail Systems Awards. There were indeed a number of entries detailing projects which were immense in scale but not particularly innovative. But at the same time, there were lots of examples of how financial institutions are making innovative and effective use of technology in such areas as social media, mobile banking, payments, cloud computing and green IT.

To cut a long story short, the FS tech sector is just as innovative (arguably more so in several areas - e.g. social media and mobile) as retail.  By way of example, I offer up a U.S. Bank project which involves employees piloting an iPhone app that uses augmented reality technology. The Find US+ app enables users to locate the bank's branches and ATMs. When pointed in a specific direction, the phone displays a computer-generated graphic for each location, its address and distance based on the user's GPS location. Each graphic is colour-coded to reflect whether the location is open, closing in an hour or closed. The app recognises when the user arrives at the destination and asks if additional information is requested. It also provides the best route and hours of operation.

There's a video on the bank's YouTube channel demonstrating the technology. It can be found here.

How cool is that?

Flip-flopping on social media

Investment information portal, assetinum, recently examined the world's 50 biggest private banking and wealth management institutions' social media activities, scoring them out of 100. The results weren't great.

A third of those under examination did not have an active Facebook profile and that included Facebook investor Goldman Sachs. D'oh! (insert muppets joke here).

Further info on the research at the FStech website.

And the winners are...

Sore heads and tired eyes at FStech today, in the aftermath of our 2012 Awards.

The event, now into its twelfth year, was held last night at the Lancaster London Hotel. Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, Hastings Direct and Barclaycard/Orange were among the winners. You can find the complete list of winners here.

Congratulations to all those who picked up a gong. Thanks to our sponsors, judges and everyone who came along. It was a really enjoyable night. Now, must go home and sleep...

2012 FStech Awards draw near

It's almost that time again...The winners of this year's FStech Awards will be announced tomorrow night.

The event, now into its twelfth year, will be held at the Lancaster London Hotel. This is my first Awards, having joined FStech from sister title, Retail Systems, in June 2011. I feel confident in saying that the judging panel have come up with the strongest list of winners since the Awards were founded 12 years ago. There will be a full house (the events team have just told me that this year's table sales are the highest yet). And the rather spiffing Alun Cochrane will be hosting. So it's all set up to be a great night.

Look forward to seeing many of you there!

All we are saying is give cash a chance

An email arrives from Bank Machine's PR peeps..."You may well have seen that the UK Payments Council announced the results of their latest quarterly statistical report," says the PR lady. "Although trying desperately to make it a contactless story, the real story which they carefully buried were the stats showing that last year showed a record high in ATM withdrawals, beating the mark set in 2008."

It's true that the Payments Council press release went big on the fact that Britons sent two-thirds more money through Faster Payments in the last three months of 2011 compared to the previous year, with the ATM stats thrown in almost as an afterthought. So in the interest of fairness...The busiest single second in the LINK network’s 25 year history was recorded at 13:03:57 on Friday 28 October, with 482 transactions made. Overall, we used cash machines 2.87 billion times during the year, taking out £191 billion, and the overwhelming majority of these transactions were free. Fewer than one in 30 ATM withdrawals were at a pay-to-use machine in the last three months of 2011, the lowest percentage for seven years.   

And comment from Ron Delnevo, MD at Bank Machine: "The level of ATM usage vividly demonstrates once again that the British public continue to place their trust in cash. Neither flashy hyping of unproven gimmicks like "contactless" cards, nor attempts to limit access to ATMs, have prevented UK citizens from continuing to exercise their right to choose cash as their number one payment method."

According to the Payments Council, the underlying reasons for the record year are "the low levels of withdrawals a year earlier during the period of heavy snowfall, the increase in the number of free-to-use machines, coupled with an increase in the number of machines dispensing £5 notes, and a possible slight increase in demand for cash by people who prefer to use cash as a budgeting tool to control their spending."

There you go, everyone's happy.

Would you pick the iBank?

I'm an Apple admirer but not sure I would. As a user of iTunes I guess you could say I am banking with the tech giant. Sort of. But at the same time I'm a bit of a stick in the mud when it comes to my bank and not sure if I would be willing to transfer everything over to them. I've been a NatWest customer for 25 years or so and during that time have only once seriously considered switching to a rival. I was a victim of card fraud and was not impressed by NatWest's shall we say casual attitude to the situation. But that's for another blog post...

There are two reasons for posing the above question. Firstly, Apple's staggering cash reserves, sparking talk of their next moves. And secondly, new research on the potential of Apple to break into the banking sector. The survey was carried out by marketing and research consultancy KAE, in conjunction with Toluna, a specialist in online polls, surveys and opinions. Toluna’s research panel community of four million consumers, collected data from over 5,000 respondents, across the US and UK. 

The press release landed in my inbox with the subject heading 'Banking with Apple could pose serious challenge to high street.' Wowser, I thought, this sounds interesting! But turns out the research revealed that currently just one in ten people would consider banking with Apple. Of those who are already customers, a mere 43 per cent would switch to the company for their day-to-day banking needs. Not exactly the sort of thing which justifies excitable prose. 

Certainly, Apple has a good base from which to launch an assault on the banking sector: an impressive track record in terms of  cross-selling products, a strong retail presence and an affluent, hugely loyal customer base, to name but three strengths. But, as things stand, they haven't thrown their hat in the ring and, even if they had, consumers are wary of making the leap from traditional banks. And rightly so. We're dealing with the great unknown here. Your money and your music are two completely different things.   

The aforementioned press release contained the comment: "it wouldn't take long for Apple to become one of the most profitable consumer banks in recent times." Really? Or how about: "the boldness of the next Apple move will inspire and terrify in equal measure." Please.

There's a serious discussion to be had re. tech giants like Apple, Amazon and Facebook posing a threat to the monopoly enjoyed by the banks. Spurious press releases might make for cheap headlines but ultimately they undermine the debate.