When Moving to the Cloud, Don't Overlook Cryptographic SecurityThere's no better way to secure critical data than through cryptography - especially when that data is stored in the cloud.
11 Failed Institutions so Far in 2011First Community Bank, a $2.31 billion institution based in Taos, NM, is the largest of four banks to fail on Friday, Jan. 28.
The First State Bank, Camargo, Oklahoma, was closed today by the Oklahoma State Banking Department, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Bank 7, Okla., City, Okla., to assume all of the deposits of The First State Bank.
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council is expected to issue new security guidance revisiting online banking and strong authentication, and a new report from Aite finds internal fraud at most institutions is underreported.
Insights on the Hottest Trends in Background ScreeningThere's no hotter trend in background screening than social media. But just as social networks can be used to screen applicants - they also can be abused.
Japan's debt got downgraded by S&P because it doesn't believe that the Japanese government is serious about taking measures to cut its deficit. And here's what the Japanese Prime Minister Naota Kan had to say, “I just heard that news....
TARP overseer Neil Barofsky says out loud what everybody -- including Obama administration officials -- knows: Too Big to Fail lives. And the problem is getting worse.
The new year brings lots of questions, planning and decision making. IT spending is tied directly to these elements, and as in past years, we have been receiving a truckload of IT spending questions. After a rough couple of years folks are curious as to if the figures are on the uptick in 2011. The [...]
Unlike the storied Pecora hearings, President Obama's blue-ribbon commission to investigate what caused the financial crisis is unlikely to change the insidious relationship between Wall Street...
Channeling my inner Alan White, my Dealbook post this week talks about the politics of expanding chapter 9 and using chapter 11 in place of the Dodd-Frank resolution authority. In short, while I actually support both ideas, with some qualifications,...
In my younger days as a product manager in Silicon Valley, my engineering team often told me that I can induce bugs simply by looking at the software. The system they built would always work perfectly until I attempted to use it and then, voila, when it was time to show it to me, it [...]
For states. Republicans including Newt Gingrich and Texas Senator John Cornyn are advocating amendments to the Bankruptcy Code to permit states to file for relief from their debts. Last week's New York Times front-page article gives added heft to this...
The latest big bank mobile RDC launch is by a bank holding company headquartered in Barcelona. Go figure! Banco Sabadell is the first Spanish bank to launch a mobile RDC service.
Press release: http://press.bancsabadell.com/2011/01/banco-sabadell-presents-its-mobile-banking-innovations-for-2011.html
The product’s menu: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bancosabadell/5367041115/
Banco Sabadell’s application has a familiar look and feel, closely resembling most mobile RDC applications launched by U.S. banks. What [...]
A few months ago, after the robosigning scandal broke, the banks assured us that they had done a thorough review of their foreclosure processes and everything was in order. I seem to recall JPMorgan Chase's CEO Jaime Dimon stating in...
Today's mail brought my hot-off-the-press copy of the essential crisis reference, The Subprime Virus by Kathleen Engel and Patricia McCoy. Subprime Virus chronicles the rise and fall of the subprime market and the regulatory (non) response, from the Clinton Administration...
Did Ibanez a particularly screwed up set of securitization documentation? Or was this just snafu? Looking around at other PSAs, I'm starting to think the latter. In Ibanez, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court noted that PSA was insufficient to serve...
On behalf of Credit Slips, I wanted to thank Annelise Riles for joining us a guest blogger. Professor Riles brought fresh and new perspectives to organizational and regulatory problems we often discuss here on Credit Slips. Her posts offered a...
In the first application of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to the banking industry, securities regulators are looking into whether financial firms broke anti-bribery laws in doing business with...
A lot of buzz today about the possibility that bank contingent debt, which the Europeans are considering requiring as part of a general improvement of captial, will not trigger CDS contracts. Well, yes, it won't trigger today's version of CDS...
Moody's and Standard & Poor's are warning that the U.S. can't sustain current spending levels forever. True. But that doesn't mean the debt bomb is about to go off.
We are gathering Celent analysts from across the globe for our annual global off site at Celent. ideas around top trends in both Retail and Corporate Banking seem to take on a new tenor this year. No longer are cost reduction and risk the top priorities. Many other growth-oriented initiatives have percolated up to the [...]
This time of the year is always good for reflection and looking forward. I have also been reflecting on the payments issues we have been dealing with at Celent in 2010 and what is likely to be important in 2011.
The good news for consumer is that payments innovation continues apace. The card schemes are competing more fiercely than ever; PayPal and [...]
There has been a lot of hype and press regarding Quora lately. Quora describes itself as:
“a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the [...]
The American Banker has an interesting piece on the impact of the Credit CARD Act. It's behind a paywall, but here's the key insight: Credit card issuers were expected to raise fees and cut rewards to compensate for lost revenue...
I was scheduled to speak at the AALS Financial Institutions breakfast this morning, but due to flight cancellations I was unfortunately unable to attend. I’m posting below a summary of what I intended to say there, and which I had...
This revisits an earlier blog entry comparing stated channel priorities between US and European banks. I’m encouraged by the spirited discussions it spawned. Some have been critical of bank’s slow – even flawed – approach to multichannel delivery. We agree. There are clear philosophical, generational, organizational and systems barriers to a swift and through transition [...]
I came across the following article yesterday about Payoff.com, a new fintech startup that, “turns financial planning into a game.” The blending of savings goals, badges, and social features piqued my interests and I headed over to take a look. The intro video explaining the solution is really slick and does a good job at [...]
As one who studies the advertising and marketing plans of payday and title loan companies, I was interested in two Wall Street Journal articles published this week on the topic of payday loans, one claiming that Dodd-Frank has pushed many...
Todd Zywicki has written several articles (here and in a fuller version here) on auto title pledge lending that cite default rates on auto title loans are 14-17%, while repossessions occur only in 4%-8% of cases and in 20% of...
Most of us remember Muhammad Yunus’s 2006 Nobel peace prize for microfinance, small loans to start businesses, with extremely low default rates. Now it looks like this industry has done what many American financiers have done, lent more than people...