Kristin Moyer

My colleague, Rick DeLotto, has blogged about H1N1 quite a bit over the past few months (see here, here, here and here).  School is back in session in many places in North America – my kids started this week.  I asked Rick how long it would take for us to hear things about H1N1 in [...]

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I’ve seen the financial crisis make it tempting for banks to focus internally in order to reduce costs, deal with post-merger integration and other matters related to the financial crisis.  To be fair, an internal focus is not really that new, though – for example, the term “banker’s hours” has long been used to jokingly [...]

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Rick DeLotto here… I was surprised this morning to find how few knew about the August 7, 2009,  “REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON U.S. PREPARATIONS FOR 2009-H1N1 INFLUENZA” by  the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  EVERYONE with responsilbity for business continuity should download and take a look at it.
 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/PCAST_H1N1_Report.pdf
 
Let me quote an [...]

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Christophe Uzureau and Kristin Moyer here.  Our “Hype Cycle for Financial Services Payment Systems, 2009” is now published (and available to Gartner clients).
Due to the current economic environment, there’s no shortage of pessimism, and it’s mostly for the right reasons. However, this doesn’t mean that banks should stop innovating and bringing new payment instruments and [...]

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A brilliant colleague of mine, David Furlonger, challenged my hypothesis that lenders should focus on rebuilding customer trust (see previous posts here, here and here).  Blasphemous?  Maybe not.
His point is that in a market with low to no credit growth, customer trust is a moot point.  There are few alternate suppliers of credit in an [...]

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Kristin Moyer and Alistair Newton here.  Last month we wrote that R&D expenditure and patent filings have tended to follow GDP and slowed significantly during the early 1990s and early 2000s with other market downturns – see here (source:  “Policy Responses to the Economic Crisis,” OECD, June 2009).  However, a downturn in expenditure on R&D does [...]

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A few weeks ago I wrote that partnerships have become increasingly important in banking as a way to provide new types of products, services and rewards, and that I see three main types of partnerships emerging.  Here are some examples of each type of partnership:

Marketing-oriented partnerships

China Construction Bank is partnered with Alibaba and Alipay to issue cards and [...]

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Kristin Moyer and Christophe Uzureau here.  Citigroup added annual fees to some of its credit card accounts last week.  Many more may follow suit in light of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act.
We believe more transparency and education is necessary in the industry.  However, this reminds us of the Australian experience.  It is often [...]

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Is a credit crisis brewing in microfinance?  Perhaps in the for-profit microfinance sector, but don’t tell that to Grameen America.
Grameen America just reached its 1,000th borrower in the US.  Grameen America makes loans, savings programs, credit establishment, and financial education available to women at or below the poverty line in the US.  Some key results:

High repayment [...]

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Over the past few weeks I’ve written about low customer trust in lending, and why it matters.  The fact that customers who do not trust their bank are likely to seek another banking partner makes it more difficult to retain existing customers and attract new ones.  Banks can ill afford either of these things in the [...]

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