IBS Journal February 2017
49
Bad month for... UK banks…Optimism continued to drop within the UK FS industry during the three months to December, but
there are signs of an improvement in business conditions over the next quarter for some sectors, according to the latest CBI/PwC Financial Services Survey.
The research, involving 103 firms, found that optimism about the overall business situation fell for the fourth consecutive quarter, the longest period of declining sentiment since the global financial crisis of 2008, and the sharpest fall since December 2008. A more pessimistic mood was particularly prevalent among banks, as well as general insurers and finance houses. However, investment managers, life insurers and insurance brokers were more positive than they had been three months earlier.
Spending on IT, meanwhile, is expected to continue to rise at a healthy pace. Increasing efficiency and ensuring regulatory compliance remain the most important motivations for investment. In terms of the potential of FinTech investments over the next three years, firms see the biggest potential as being for process automation, data analytics, cyber security and digital transformation.
Nine in ten banks view preparing for the impact of Brexit as the number one challenge during 2017, but this was not the case in any other sector. Building societies were most concerned about macroeconomic uncertainty, while the level of competition preoccupies the insurance sectors. Every sector sees the need to intensify their dialogue with regulators in response to uncertainty around Brexit.
FinTech gender equality…Just 8% of FinTech Directors globally are women, according to research by DHR International. That compares with 22% of board members at the world’s 30 biggest banks. “FinTech has the opportunity to bring a new culture of change and flexibility, so it is surprising that there are not more women on boards,” says Gert Stürzebecher, a Frankfurt-based partner at DHR. “Banking is kind of an old boy’s club, though that is starting to change, and technology is very male-dominated.”
Dutch FinTechs came bottom in DHR’s study of 268 companies across 19 countries, with only 3% of women on their boards, compared with 11% in Nordic countries and 9% in the US. French and German FinTechs also have much work to do with 4%, while the UK was in line with the average of 8%.
National Australia Bank mistakenly sent 65,000 customers’ bank account details to an email address controlled by a domain name squatter and owner of adult websites. David Weissenberg, who owns the likes of supersleazy and sexpornhost through his company Real Assets, received the data when it was wrongly emailed to
nab.com, which he also controls.
The incident 2012 occurred in 2012 but has only just been revealed by NAB. It affected its migrant banking customers, with wrongly shared details including customer names, addresses, email addresses, BSB and account numbers.
Lloyds Banking Group suffered online and app banking woes during January. The FI, which includes Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, was the victim of a denial of service attack across all its brands on Wednesday, 11th and Thursday, 12th. It says that no accounts were hacked or compromised during the attack, and it did not pay a ransom.
www.ibsintelligence.com
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