All articles by RBI editorial
RBI editorial
Changing fortunes for India’s banks
ICICI Bank, Indias largest private sector bank by assets, has posted a 94 percent decline in retail profits for the fiscal 12 month period to 31 March 2009: INR580 million ($11.6 million) compared to INR9.47 billion for the year-ago period
Spain’s Bankinter tops worldwide cross-selling league
If there is one banking strategy above all others that has become the focus du jour it is cross-selling Indeed, in the toughening global banking environment, interest in cross-selling has been driven to an all-time high Squeezing extra revenue from existing customers as opposed to acquiring new ones continues to make very sound business sense.
A smarter piggy bank from ANZ
Australian banking group ANZ signed a deal with innovative US Web 2.0 platform SmartyPig at the end of last year, adding an exclusive social savings option to its product range The bank says the top three savings goals for account holders are saving for a holiday, saving for a car, and what ANZ describes as just saving to save. At the end of April, ANZ, the third-largest Australian bank ranked by deposits, picked up an innovation excellence award for its SmartyPig savings account
A world of payment innovation
According to a new report from VRL Publishing, alternative payment services and products are being used by an increasing number of consumers around the world and the threat these upstart channels pose to more established and traditional payment models and banking groups has never been greater. Use of and interest in alternative payments is growing significantly year-on-year and these competing business models now threaten traditional bank payment revenue like never before A new breed of brands such as PayPal, Wizzit and M-Pesa are slowly but surely seeping into the mainstream, fuelled by online and mobile commerce, with the potential to decrease the fee income banks earn from cards and payments portfolios.
A time to create value
In an era of lower profits and sluggish growth, banks need to get even smarter about customer service and the products they offer, according to a major new study from IBM A state of the industry banking report from US technology giant IBM has suggested that the new world order for the financial services industry now developing will see banks disposing of non-core businesses in an effort to reduce operating costs by at least 20 percent.
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Savings banks and co-ops stand out
Total assets increased by 2.5 percent to 1.07 trillion ($1.4 trillion), the highest growth since 2001, according to the Association of German Savings Banks (the DSGV), while customer loans increased by 2.3 percent to 631.4 billion.
Fees fall through the net
The average annual price for active users of retail banking services decreased by 2 percent to 70.3$95 globally in 2008, with price levels ranging from 54.3 in Asia-Pacific to 76.6 in the Europe non-eurozone region, according to the sixth annual World Retail Banking Report from Capgemini, UniCredit and Efma.
M-Pesa: Kenya’s revolutionary new bank
In developing markets where the vast majority of consumers are unbanked, person-to-person transfers using a mobile phone link have emerged as a powerful and potentially disruptive payments and banking mechanism Kenyas largest telecommunication services provider, Safaricom, 40 percent owned by Vodafone, says it now has five million subscribers to its pioneering M-Pesa mobile phone-based money transfer service
Turkey pauses for breath
Turkey has been one of the worlds most dynamic retail banking markets for the past five years and drawn in most of the worlds largest banking groups in the process
Backwards into the future
That is one of the main conclusions drawn by a new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Living With New Realities, which seeks to gauge the state of the retail banking industry in the aftermath of the current crisis. The rise of direct banking, fuelled at first by the advances in technology which enabled the roll out of superior mobile and internet banking operations, will undoubtedly continue through 2009 as financial institutions look for low-cost methods of boosting market share