Digital Pound – (still) don’t do it!

The Bank of England is consulting on the design of digital pound but they are asking the wrong question: they should be asking whether the digital pound is the best answer to the challenges that motivate them; - it is not. Executive summary The Bank of England in...

CBDCs and Digital IDs – like love and marriage

They go together.  Central-Bank Digital currencies (CBDC) look to be an inevitability.  Given that, can we at least use the UK government’s new digital identity trust framework to ensure some level of privacy. Premise one – CBDCs are inevitable The Bank for...

Retail CBDC – Don’t do it!

Central Bank Digital Currency may well have a future but not as proposed by the Bank of England – read why here.

Managing Change in Financial Services Risk and Compliance Communities – why is it more difficult?

This short document is intended as a discussion paper – posing the question above, and hypothesis that there are two reasons which do not apply to other communities (they have their own difficulties), and providing some potential solutions.

Update to Banking Technologies and Strategies

In the accompanying article “Banking Operations Strategies and Technologies – 15 Years on” we reviewed how our last guess at how these subjects evolved versus the predictions at the time.  We got enough things right to provoke us into having another go. 

Banking Operations Strategies & Technologies Review

Sixteen years ago HBW wrote a number of articles on strategies for different parts of the Banking Framework.  This article takes a review of what was said in the article Banking Operations Strategies and Technologies and links to an updated view of where the industry is going.

How Are Banks Seriously Going To Address The Rampant Rise In Fraud?

Fraud is rising – could a digital personality be used to make real-time decisions to counter fraud?

POST 2019 UK CHEQUE CLEARING PROCESS

In 2018 the UK developed a new way of handling cheques based on cheque image processing.  This change has been called ICS (Image Clearing Systems) and previously FCM (Future Clearing Model).  Whatever it is called, from end 2019 it will be the way cheques are cleared...
POST 2019 AGENCY BANK CHEQUE CLEARING

POST 2019 AGENCY BANK CHEQUE CLEARING

This article is an extension of the article (Pre 2019 UK Cheque Clearing Process) which explains how cheque clearing works in the UK from the end of 2019.  It expands to by exploring how small Banks and Building Societies participate in the cheque clearing scheme without being full members, and as a consequence, they have a slightly different process.

read more
PSD2 and Open Banking – Retailers to win vs Banks!

PSD2 and Open Banking – Retailers to win vs Banks!

This article gives a high level forecast of the likely implications of PSD2 and Open Banking on UK Banks. (For an introduction to the API technology underneath these rules click here). Our central forecasts are;
• Credit card monolines and the credit card divisions of banks will suffer income hits as retailers promote lower cost PSD2/ Open Banking payment mechanisms.
• In the three to five year timetable retailers will take market share of consumer lending from banks unless banks act.
Some banks will flourish because they will exploit their knowledge and understanding of API’s to work with retailers and become partners rather than the enemy.

read more