A recent conversation with one of the worlds most influential trading desks netted the question, what does the next generation of trading application look like, "what is possible today and where are we going?" Observing a teenager today playing a video...

Too much information and too little time to absorb it - that's the dilemma of the financial markets today. We have more data than we can possibly absorb: spreadsheets with tens of columns and thousands of rows; news headlines streaming faster than the...

A bank’s peers, partners, clients, counterparties…. All demand and expect greater transparency, to keep the markets efficient and fair. Just as importantly, from a risk and profitability standpoint, organisations must strive to achieve greater...

New regulation and technology begs the question what will the bank of the future be? Banking has changed radically over the last decade, and will surely change significantly over the next. A big change was the abolition of Glass-Steagall. But Dodd-Frank...

I bumped into one of my colleagues, Dave, the other day in the office. I was surprised to see him there. "How can you work at home so much," I asked. He replied, "I am better off there. I have my own office, and much better kit." Some of us have better...

There's a certain level of risk involved in investing branches with new technology. If the goal is to get closer to customers, it is important that they are wowed and not confused. Before committing to major investments, banks should consider going through...

It's 7.30 am Friday morning. In the office snatching moments between messages. A cup of Joe jumpstarts me. I decide to trip across the internet. I take my avatar with me. I hate to dress up and travel alone. Yes, I have my own avatar, custom built...

Tougher markets encourage deeper, more profitable customer relationships. The need for banks to treat each of us as unique is becoming more important. Three technologies in particular are making selling to a market of one a practical option; digital marketing...

By David Cox In recent years we have seen enormous changes, but we are only at the beginning of a revolution in technology. Since the 1970s, computers have altered little in their basic functions although they have become more powerful, portable, accessible...

We are experiencing a game changing leap in the technology of user interfaces. Virtual key pads touch screen technology, and, with Microsoft’s Kinect, commands driven by speech, gestures even emotions create a quantum leap in computing. In contrast...

When we talk about Cloud with our peers in the Industry, the conversation immediately goes to the Data Center level, Infrastructure as a Service is the best understood part of a very complex and new environment. But recently more and more conversations...

My early memories of TV involved black and white screens and rabbit ear antennae. Three main TV networks - NBC, CBS and ABC - let advertisers reach 90 percent of U.S. audiences. With the advent of cable, channels proliferated and audiences fragmented...

The government report on the causes of the financial crisis is finally out and it makes compelling reading. Much of the material is already well known, but even for those of us who think we have read everything, it's cold, matter-of-fact recounting of...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, much has been written on the increasing risks banks took to grow profits, and the collateral damage that was caused. Hard questions have been raised on the true role of banks within the economy. Are they operating...

New York used to be famous for its luncheon clubs. Professional New Yorkers would take time midday to combine a fine meal with a networking experience followed by a slow afternoon and an early retreat to the suburbs. Today our days are more pressured...

Many financial firms see meeting compliance as one of their biggest challenges for 2011. Dodd-Frank is arguably the most comprehensive program of financial reform since the Depression era, embracing areas from interchange fees to derivatives. MiFID II...

The 2011 Shift Index from Deloitte has a simple message. The way for firms to improve performance is to increase worker passion, while the message for employees is follow your dreams. They may not lead to the same place. For those who are new to the...

Passing by a colleague’s desk I was really impressed by his Twitter activity. Suddenly I felt that I was missing out on something big. The whole world was tweeting leaving me behind. Here was I, an occasional writer on social networking and technology...

History tells us there are certain watershed moments. Banking is going through such a phase. After decades of building systems around products, the industry must now build technology around customers, and, in particular customer relationships. Also, the...

At the recent Davos Summit, Big Data was described as an asset as valuable as currency or gold. Why this sudden excitement over something that has been around for years? Because the tools are now available for organizations to build a more powerful Analytical...

As described in a previous post, an Analytical Enterprise is one that leverages data to its advantage. This includes the hard-to-tame “Big Data”, which is too awkward to be managed by traditional means. To support this mining of Big Data...

$600 trillion – that’s the size of the derivatives market. 40 times the size of the U.S. economy. And it has long been one of the most opaque wonders of the world. So it’s no surprise that regulators are all over it. The consequences...

Several years ago at university I took a course in the economics of developing countries. Back then I thought I had stumbled on the most intractable problem mankind ever faced. Now with the world running out of resources perhaps the concept of developing...

Popular mythology suggests younger people are more tech savvy than older ones; digital natives and digital immigrants divided by technology. Teenagers would rather text than talk. By implication, boomers are technophobes or at best neophytes. Future...

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the recent Facebook IPO but less consensus over the long term value of the company. And bad news begets bad news. Even issues like outages gain national attention as if they were part of some deeper...