Oi, Bank of England, keep a woman on English banknotes!

So, Winston Churchill is set to replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry as the face of £5 notes. This means that, other than the Queen, there will be no women featuring on our English bank notes.

There's a petition against this at Change.org, which can be found here. It notes that, "An all-male line-up on our banknotes sends out the damaging message that no woman has done anything important enough to appear...People will perhaps say that the Queen appears on all the notes. But the Queen would be there whatever she achieved - she was born into her position. The men on the banknotes - Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and soon, Winston Churchill - are all there because of what they have done, not because of who their parents were."

Quite right, I say. You know what to do, good people. 

Taking the current account plunge

Research issued by first direct shows that 44 per cent of UK adults have never switched their current account and a further 27 per cent have only moved their banking once. Also, only four per cent said they will definitely change their current account provider in the next two years.

When asked what would prompt them to switch, two thirds flagged up the introduction of charges by their current provider and 54 per cent poor customer service. However, only 15 per cent stated they were extremely satisfied with their current account provider.

Just been asking people what I work with and their feedback backs up this survey. Sample comment: "I've been with Barclays for years and see no reason why I would change now."

It's the same with me. I've been a NatWest customer since my teens. I remain with them not because I think they provide an amazing service (overall it's OK and there have been times when I've felt badly treated), but because I consider switching, then put it off, telling myself it's too much hassle. Will this change with the emergence of new entrants and the launch of the new seven-day account switching service in September? Meh. I dunno. Maybe...

Sainsbury's banks on LBG buyout

Here's an interesting one...Sainsbury's is closing in on full ownership of Sainsbury's Bank. The supermarket giant confirmed this morning that it will take control of the bank by buying the 50 per cent held by partner Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) in a £248 million deal.

Sainsbury's was the first major British supermarket to open a bank, launching in 1997 in a 50/50 joint venture with Bank of Scotland, later subsumed by Lloyds. It says that this latest move gives it the opportunity to increase its number of customers and enhance loyalty by offering accessible, high quality and tailored products which reward customers who bank and shop with it...But will it become a major player? Probably not. It currently has just over one million customers and has been making a decent profit for Sainsbury's and LBG. But that's unlikely to worry retail banking's 'big five' (Lloyds, RBS, Barclays, HSBC and Santander UK) who still (rather depressingly) control the majority of UK current accounts. The government is keen to encourage greater competition but customers remain reluctant to switch.

Technology wise, over a 42 month period the bank will transition support and back office services away from Lloyds Banking Group. Call centre services will be provided in-house by the bank and banking platforms will be delivered by FIS. All parties have been working together for a number of months to agree a detailed transition plan.

According to a statement issued by Sainsbury's: "The transition will involve the transfer of data from legacy Lloyds Banking Group systems to the latest generation banking platform. This platform will allow a greater degree of flexibility, enabling new product launches and facilitating a much improved digital offer to customers."

Certainly, all involved will be hoping to tread a different path to that of Tesco Bank, which experienced various problems resulting in a raft of negative headlines when it broke with RBS and set up its own core banking system. Ugh. Who'd be a retail banker, eh?

Contactless works when handled with care

Shock horror! A contactless story which is not just a case of all hype and no substance. I still say that lots more work needs to be done to sell this way of paying to the general public, but Marks & Spencer is a good example of how it should be done. The retailer has completed a roll-out to 644 of its UK stores, including its railway and airport franchise stores. It is processing over 230,000 contactless transactions every week. Fourteen per cent of M&S card transactions under £20 are now completed by this method and a quarter are processed at self-checkout points in the Food Halls. 

The roll-out followed a trial in 25 London stores last summer. Although London continues to have the highest levels of contactless transactions, M&S is seeing increasing use of these cards in other busy urban centres including Manchester, Croydon and Reading. Richard Cooke, store manager at M&S Finsbury Pavement, which completes around one in three of its card transactions under £20 by contactless, comments: "In busy central stores that receive a huge lunch time rush, contactless payment is helping to revolutionise the customer experience. Self- check out tills are already very popular, but contactless helps reduce queue times even further, giving customers a payment option that’s even quicker than cash."

Now, all we need is more retailers getting onboard in similarly enthusiastic fashion and more British banks rolling out cards to all their customers and, hey presto, we've got momentum, baby (as someone once sang). Simples.

Multi-channel banking conference: call for speakers

The FStech Multi-Channel Banking Summit is due to take place at the IoD Hub, London on Thursday, 4 July.

This will be chaired by Practicology's Martin Newman and will feature speakers/panellists from Santander, HSBC, Clearwater Corporate Finance, Ovum, IDC Financial Insights, Accenture and Conversocial. I'm currently on the look out for further speakers/panellists representing financial institutions. Interested in taking part? Then drop me a line (contact details here).

A mixture of speaker presentations and discussion panels, the conference will look at how banks are progressing in terms of multi-channel strategies and delivering the consistent service needed to engage and retain customers. It will also highlight the latest technology solutions available to institutions looking to achieve multi-channel success.

Topics under discussion will include:

- Using mobile and social media to effectively engage with Generation Y banking customers.
- The High Street’s not dead: what will the branch of the future look like?
- Security/fraud issues.
- The latest multi-channel technology solutions.
- Future challenges to address in order to move forward with multi-channel strategies in the long-term.

The lady's not returning

So, farewell then Maggie...

I wouldn't class myself as vehemently anti-Thatcher. She was right on some things (the Falklands, plus taking on the unions and in particular that populist buffoon Arthur Scargill). She was, however, also a political one trick pony, a streetfighter who frequently showed a vicious disregard for anyone who didn't agree with her and who lost her way in spectacular fashion during the later years of her leadership.

But, from an FStech point of view, you have to hand it to the Iron Lady; her government's reforms set off the Big Bang, transforming the way that the City operated and making it an international player. The City also expanded east, to Canary Wharf, something strongly backed and pushed through by Thatcher. Banker bashing may be all the rage these days. Yet thanks to the sweeping changes she ushered in, financial services remains one of the few industries in which this country occupies world leader status.

So, farewell then Maggie. I was seven when you came to power and in my late teens when you left office. I'll never forget my staunchly left wing A level History teacher rejoicing on the day you resigned as PM and party leader. Thanks for the memories, some good, some bad, but, as I'm sure you would have forcibly argued, you have to take the rough with the smooth. RIP.

The FinTech 50 – the future of finance

Guest blog post by Alex Macpherson, Head of the Ventures team, Octopus Investments

The FinTech 50 provided a great opportunity to learn about and discuss the current trend of emerging innovative financial technology companies in Europe. The FinTech sector has never looked more exciting as economic, technological and social catalysts combine to create an appetite for innovation in this market. The financial services companies themselves are recognising that they need to invest in new technologies to manage the pressures of increased data flow, content production and user demand. What’s more, it is still early days and the opportunity for the FinTech market to respond to these needs and rapidly grow is clear.

The market is huge, with the term ‘FinTech’ encompassing many different sectors within the financial services industry – from banking to electronic payments to insurance to foreign exchange operations. Nevertheless, within this broad industry there are three particular areas where, to my mind, the drivers for change are resulting in innovative FinTech companies developing solutions that are and will dramatically alter the way business is conducted.

Peer-to-peer lending and crowd funding

With savers receiving paltry interest rates from banks on their deposits and newspaper headlines repeatedly serving as a reminder that funding for  small businesses and individuals is scarce, it is unsurprising that we are seeing such growth in peer-to-peer lenders connecting these two groups of dissatisfied customers. Funding Circle, which provides businesses loans, and Zopa, for individual loans, are two examples of this business model in practice. The Financial Services Authority has recognised the growth in crowd funding companies, and it is good to see the likes of Seedr and CrowdCube obtaining regulatory approval for their business activity to endorse the legitimacy to this form of lending.

Automatic processing and electronic exchanges

There is a significant opportunity for new innovative technologies across all areas of processing financial trades, as we seek to remove human intervention and the risk of human error that comes with it. Over the last few years we have seen the decline of open-outcry or face-to-face exchanges in favour of the electronic trading platform. This has been applied across product categories, most recently with the introduction of platforms for listed securities and high yield bonds with the likes of Chi- X and Vega Chi bringing innovative solutions to the market. The subsequent reduction in errors and cost savings of automatic trades should be regarded as a positive outcome for the financial services industry as a whole, and the opportunity for continued developments in this area is immense. FinTech companies are also crucially helping to reduce the cost of doing business by bringing new innovative technologies to market. This is well illustrated by the mutual funds industry, which has for a number of years existed with numerous different systems and little connectivity between them. However, Calastone is now providing a global transaction network for the industry to help make the overall market more efficient. 

Regulation

The shadow of the financial crisis continues to loom large over the industry, and the proliferation of regulation is just one side effect.  Again this provides opportunity to a variety of FinTech businesses that are focusing on finding ways of helping companies meet an increasing number of regulatory requirements. Semafone, for example, aims to support PCI DSS compliance, ensuring companies meet standards for the handling of cardholder payment information. New businesses and the technologies they bring to market often evolve out of the need to solve a problem and this is particularly significant in the financial services technology space.

As evidenced by the above there is a wealth of opportunity for FinTech businesses as changes to technology, business practices, consumer attitudes and regulation combine to create a dynamic and quickly evolving industry. The FinTech 50 Watchlist celebrates all companies in this space that have the potential to significantly transform an aspect of the industry, or the competitive staying power to continue being one of the industry’s game-changing technologies. The future of the financial services truly lies in the lands of the FinTech entrepreneur.