Services Insights

With much of Europe and other global jurisdictions returning to yet another lockdown, we can be reasonably confident that markets will cope well this time around. The second lockdown coincided with the traditional end of the budgeting season and led to many firms shifting their priorities towards working from home and remote trading. This lockdown... read more

In the beginning, digital challengers presented themselves as a kind of anti-bank proposition. This initially served them well, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis - which eroded peoples’ confidence in high street lenders so severely that ten years on two thirds of Brits still do not trust banks, according to a YouGov poll. ... read more

As the fintech sector grows almost exponentially, so commensurately do the risks. The pandemic has created new threats, mainly through home working, but others have been mounting steadily for years such as Brexit, tougher regulation, cyber attacks and relentless competition in a sector that is by its nature turbulent.   The most immediate... read more

Long the bastion of cash and liquidity management, bank treasury teams do far more than position-keeping. Real-time risk management, operations, payments, and financial risk management are rolled into the business function. Over the past few years, market-leading software has become key to overseeing the risk and reward of each process, and so... read more

It’s been a tough year for financial market participants in the UK, with the pandemic causing turbulence and uncertainty around Brexit undermining future strategy-building. Next year looks set to be almost as chaotic, as the country looks to rewrite its rulebook while maintaining its stake as a global financial powerhouse. For fintechs, it... read more

Viable businesses in Britain will require more low-cost finance for investment if they are to survive the blows of the pandemic – and it must come in the form of a “major commitment from the financial services industry”, warned the Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey in a speech this week. Also this week, Bank of... read more

Investment managers have been under immense pressure for some time, which is acting as a catalyst for much-needed change across the asset management industry. The monumental shift towards passive investing has stretched fees and stricter regulation has dramatically increased compliance costs. That's put significant strain on margins for active... read more

Despite having registered over two million users in the UK, Open Banking is still failing to meet its objectives of creating a more competitive retail banking landscape. “Everything that it's looking to achieve in terms of improving competition and transparency amongst the incumbent banks, and diluting a little bit the reliance on the... read more

Banking and the wider financial services sector should be more concerned with big techs than fintech competitors, as they look to expand their offerings into products and services. Speaking on a Sibos 2020 panel, Michael King, Lansdowne chair in finance at the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria said big techs will be more... read more