Two articles coinciding over the weekend about challengers to the big British Banks: An article in the Economist on New Banks featuring Weatherbys, Aldermore, Metro Bank, Tesco Bank and Wonga. The Bottom Line on Radio 4 featured a discussion on Alternative Finance including Giles Andrews is CEO of Zopa, the peer to peer lending website; Anil …
Category: Finance
Feb 11
The ten-year-old test
In order to provide children with better skills to manage money, it has been suggested that Banks should go into schools to teach basic financial life skills. This suggestion is not without its critics, using much the same arguments as why sugar companies should not provide educational materials about nutrition. I set about explaining banking …
May 30
Big boost for alternative lenders
The government is planning £100m in funding for alternative lenders, including new internet finance firms. It is part of £500m being made available to small and medium sized firms through the government’s Business Finance Partnership. So called peer-to-peer lenders are expected to be big beneficiaries. They use the internet to match businesses with investors with …
May 09
Gagging for IT
I can’t comment on what someone who can’t be said to be a banker was up to when the Crunch hit. The buzz when Twitter user @injunctionsuper spilled the beans was mainly around the celebrities named. @Ruskin147 – Rather weird that Twitter has been alive with super-injunction details for weeks – but one new account …
Apr 15
Compliance testing
I was chased today to complete my overdue mandatory compliance training. So I spent a few hours completing the training and the test. The result? “Test Passed The exam contained 14 questions, of which you answered 13 correctly, or 93%. These are the questions you answered incorrectly: What are the consequences of failing to complete …
Apr 12
Phishermans Friend
I get an email from McKinsey. “Someone you have never heard of has lost your data.” I was not alone. Epsilon, a marketing services company that sends 40 billion e-mails a year has been hacked. An estimated 2% of its customer date has been “exposed”. As with the recent major leak at RSA, Epsilon has …
Apr 01
Break in at the locksmith
The IT security world was rocked by the publication of an open letter, written by security vendor RSA boss Art Coviello on 18 March. In the letter he said the company had ‘identified an extremely sophisticated cyber-attack in progress’. ‘An investigation has led us to believe that the attack is in the category of an …
Mar 29
Social Security Payments
Madison Kay spent $1,400 on bushels of Smurfberries. Aside from illustrating the need for Stephanie Kay to keep one-click ordering away from her eight year old daughter, it also illustrates the bushels of money to be made from virtual worlds: with $99 for a barrow load of smurfberries in a game ostensibly for children, what …
Jun 01
Achieving efficiency in a new dimension
My introduction to pan-European finance technology came on the day Europhile Tony Blair became prime minister. After casting my vote, I drove to my companies newly opened Paris office to struggle with installing a French version of Windows 95 from 24 floppy disks. Since then I have become well versed in the benefits and practice …