White Space Redefined

Came across a brilliant document that has outlined 12 case studies of service organisations that have applied innovation in creating quantum value.

The case studies include three players in Banking & Financial services - Bank of America, The Hartford and MyBizHomepage. The case study on Bank of America highlights the "Keep the Change" programme, has proven to be an inflection point of sorts for the bank in the North American market, which is a must read if you have'nt already.

Do read on the concept of seizing the white space as detailed in the document. The report has been prepared by Peer Insight

Much has been written on the need for innovation. The model provides a simple and lucid method to articulate the opportunities in the competitive space as also the "Inside Out" & "Outside In" approaches that your organisation could take to creating value.

Once again, a must read.

Internet Access Redefined

No laptops, PCs, PDAs, clunky internet access devices.....

Internetspeech has a developed a technology that makes the Internet accessible over the phone. That's right....no keyboards, monitors or even a stylus...Just pick up your phone and yell "Yahoo" or "email" and the service would help you access the information / messages on your account.

The possibilities and opportunities are limitless for information & transactional services. Be it for executives on the move seeking to access their email or portfolio value, or a customer in the BOP attempting to determine the rates of onions in the local wholesale market!

As I keep saying, its not in the technology...it's in the user interface!

Am excited with the opportunities for banking and financial services...Lets see how this evolves in the coming years....

Biometrics Redefined

A critical milestone for the widespread adoption of any new technology is the establishment of standards! The ISO has released a standard for financial services for biometric applications - ISO 19092:2008

This would, I hope assist financial institutions in adopting and developing applications on a common platform for biometric end uses.

Biometrics enables accurate authentication and the end benefits include reduced risk and fraud alongwith customer convenience

Biometrics is also finding new use applications in a wide array of industries including loyalty systems......

An extract from the ISO website

"ISO 19092:2008 describes the security framework for using biometrics for authentication of individuals in financial services. It introduces the types of biometric technologies and addresses issues concerning their application. ISO 19092:2008 also describes the architectures for implementation, specifies the minimum security requirements for effective management, and provides control objectives and recommendations suitable for use by a professional practitioner.

The following are within the scope of ISO 19092:2008:

• usage of biometrics for the authentication of employees and persons seeking financial services by:
• verification of a claimed identity;
• identification of an individual;
• validation of credentials presented at enrolment to support authentication as required by risk management;
• management of biometric information across its life cycle comprised of the enrolment, transmission and storage, verification, identification and termination processes;
• security of biometric information during its life cycle, encompassing data integrity, origin authentication and confidentiality;
• application of biometrics for logical and physical access control;
• surveillance to protect the financial institution and its customers;
• security of the physical hardware used throughout the biometric information life cycle.

ISO 19092:2008 provides the mandatory means whereby biometric information may be encrypted for data confidentiality or other reasons."

Scotiabank Pilots Social Network for Staff

Some of you may have read an article I had written on social networking in corporates a couple of months back.

Was thrilled to see Scotiabank in Canada having launched a social networking platform for their staff members recently. The platform would allow employees to view profiles and exchange ideas and best practices.

Social networking within large organisations can break across hierarchies and departments and tap into the unutilised potential that lies within employees............which would lead to innovation I'm sure....

Risk Redefined!

"In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."....Al Pacino - Scarface...

Hmmmmm....and this was a blog on trends and innovations in banking and financial services...fear not.....

A research conducted recently at the University of Berkley, determined a correlation between sex and propensity to taking greater financial risk! Hence, when young men were exposed to erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a more scary or neutral image such as a snake.

This is in line with an increasing amount of research being undertaken in the area of neuroeconomics, which attempts to understand better the areas of brain biology with softer aspects of human psychology and its influence on individuals / organisation's perspectives and actions on undertaking financial risks.

The above study may be criticized for its accuracy, but there is obviously a need to understand the genetic code and stimuli that stimulate greater financial risk taking abilities.

Innovation and risk taking go hand in hand and am looking forward to more breakthrough research in this area.

If you'd like to read more on neuroeconomics click here to get started....

Picked up from Wikipedia...
"Neuroeconomics is the subset that focuses on personal choices and the mental changes that correlate with the choices and may even cause them. A key insight is that the biological substance of a living organism can be modeled as implementing an optimizing solution to some survival/reproductive challenge in the evolutionary environment."