Rationalising Global Connections to Drive Costs Down, Visibility Up

Over the past fifteen years, investment banks have seen a massive expansion in global connectivity, encompassing hundreds of links to exchanges and buy side clients as well as infrastructure to backup sites.

This complex connectivity infrastructure is business critical, delivering reliable resiliency, but is also very expensive, from hardware to leased lines and exchange memberships. There is, without doubt, both significant duplication and under-utilisation of these key resources.

Branches and mobile banking: do you need both?

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One of the discussions at the Payments Knowledge Forum, which took place in London last week, was whether or not both branches and mobile banking are needed? While there were plenty of good arguments for both sides of the debate, the main common point was consumer experience. Consumers want to have an enjoyable banking service that is easy to use and consistent, whatever the channel. Robert Johnston, marketing director at NCR, said that a key differentiator from one company to another is the quality of consumer experience, more so than the products that are on offer.