Millennials demand digital banking

Millennials hold the key to the future of banking. By 2018, they will have the highest spending power of any generation, and by 2025 three quarters of workers globally will be a millennial. Challenging the status quo, a third of millennials don’t believe they’ll need a bank in the next five years.

Apathy towards traditional banks is born of frustration. For a generation who have embraced the likes of Google, Amazon and Uber, feeling the need to use a physical branch to make financial decisions is unappealing.

Mondo gets the public Beta blues

Who’d be a challenger bank, eh? Getting that cool digital offering to market is a long and winding road with many a treacherous turn as mobile-only newcomer Mondo has been finding out. Earlier this month, it was forced to reboot a crowdfunding initiative after an initial demand for participation overwhelmed Crowdcube’s servers.

And now the startup (tagline: Finally, a bank as smart as your phone) has been experiencing teething problems following the launch of a public Beta, inviting iPhone users across the UK to download its app from the App Store.

Throwing good money after bad

Clearing house Bacs has said that it is working on a number of initiatives to boost the UK’s struggling Current Account Switch Service (CASS), following intervention by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

A vision of the future - and it has to be near term if you want to compete

Immediately following the 2008 crash we should have been at the peak of regulatory change. Indeed, there were some very rapid responses, such as the 2009/2010 UK liquidity regime.  The mountain of reform needed was far greater than initially understood, ranging from structural change to Basel III.

As a result of the size of the change needed, it has been slower. Bank business model changes have arisen as a result of the redefinition of capital, the meaning of high quality and, of course liquidity. In addition, the amount of capital reserves and liquidity have increased.  But now that Basel III is largely in place, is the avalanche over? 

BBVA: the FinTech poster child that thinks about the future

Another significant move by BBVA as it this week acquires Finnish online banking start-up Holvi. You have to hand it to the Spanish FI, when it comes to facing up to FinTech disruption, it is leaving many of its counterparts in the dust.

Cash continues to make a splash

Look away now, banks, card schemes and all the other proponents of a cashless society. It seems that notes and coins are not going away just yet. LINK cash withdrawals from UK ATMs in 2015 amounted to a record £128 billion. The total number of cash withdrawals only grew slightly in 2015 (by 0.8%) with the value of these increasing by 2%. The amount cash machine users took out also went up – with the average value rising from £61.25 in 2014 to £61.93 in 2015.