Kristin Moyer

Alistair Newton here. I met with a group of bankers last week, and in the course of a conversation one of them made it clear their concerns over current attempts by banks to cut costs. Too often he said, banks’ attempts to drive operational efficiency simply have a negative impact on the level and degree [...]

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Alistair Newton here. We’ve seen recent reports from retailers in the United States – Wal Mart and Target in particular – reporting significant reductions in the use of credit cards as a percentage of the overall payments made in their stores. Whilst the shift from credit card to debit card usage is not restricted to [...]

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ALERT: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee Bankers just had “reasonably foreseeable hazard or risk” redefined for them.  
Rick DeLotto here… FEMA just announced the publication of “Impact of Earthquakes on the Central USA “ defining the risks to this 8 state area from a earthquake at the New Madrid Fault in [...]

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Kristin Moyer and Alistair Newton here.  This is what one of the media guys at our Spring Symposium told a Gartner analyst recently:  “You didn’t talk about Prosper in your presentation,” he said as he took of the analyst’s microphone. He had just taken in excess of $15,000 of his savings and put it into [...]

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Is this your approach to peer-to-peer (P2P) lending financial social networks (FSNs)?

It is for many banks.  We hear the following almost daily from banks from around the world:  “P2P volumes are low, so I don’t have to worry about it.  Right?”
No – this is changing.  Some FSNs that support P2P lending are reporting an increase in uptake [...]

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Banks in many regions of the world are preparing to make substantial changes to their payments systems.  There are many reasons for this, including everything from regulatory change to volume growth to cost containment to improving technology (and more).  As an overarching theme, banks are preparing to modernize their payments systems.
The interesting thing is this:  [...]

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Mary Knox here.  What is the impact of the recent market turmoil on data management initiatives in financial services firms?
From the client conversations I have had it seems that (at least some cases) strategic initiatives are being funded, while spending on day to day operations may be being cut – and the ability to do [...]

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Christophe Uzureau and Stessa Cohen here.  What’s the commonality between banking in developed markets and banking in emerging markets?  The way customers are currently using mobile financial services.
Global usage of mobile banking services remains low.
Most of the current usage is to receive alerts and check account balances. This is especially valid in emerging markets [...]

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Kristin Moyer and Peter Redshaw here.  This past week, one of the large, global technology vendors echoed what Gartner is hearing from our client base – that banks are becoming increasingly concerned about the financial viability of some of their niche, but critical, technology vendors.  In fact, in some cases banks are going so far [...]

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ATM charges if not in-network: $2-$6.  Checking a bag on a plane: $30.  Medical specialist visit: $100 in balance billing. For institutions this is revenue – for customers it’s just plain annoying and a strong incentive to leave the institution.
Surprise, in their desperation, banks are beginning to focus more on fee income.  This highlights something [...]

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