Welcome to Finextra. We use cookies to help us to deliver our services. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you may change your preferences at our Cookie Centre.
Please read our Privacy Policy.

Accept
Channels
Profile
Location
London
Member since
2017
Writes about
Regulation & Compliance Retail banking

Richard's blog archive

2023 (4) 2021 (2)

Richard's long read archive

2023 (1)
Richard Kalas

Richard Kalas

Client Solutions Director for Retail Banking at GFT Group
Message Message me Posts: 6 Comments: 4

Blogs

Banking

Time for banks to provide better clarity to their customers whilst abroad

09 May 2023

In the second part of this blog, I examine how banks can improve their offerings for customers travelling abroad. Whilst traditional banks may think that consumers use neobanks abroad and then return to their traditional bank once home, the research paints quite a different picture. It indicates that 18% now use their neobank as their main current...

Banking

Do banks need to provide better clarity and support to their customers whilst abroad?

03 May 2023

Whether it is spending money whilst on holiday, sending cash to friends or relatives in foreign countries, or making payments during business trips abroad – bank cards are no longer used for domestic purposes only. The pace of change in the way we spend money in foreign countries has been exponential. Only a decade ago, consumers relied on transfer...

See all Richard's blogs

Long reads

How reactive banks can build resilience for customer and organisation

23 Feb 2023

Economic volatility has ushered in a new wave of financial concern for the UK. Customers of banks who lack in-depth financial knowledge are now relying on banking providers to help inform them to make wiser financial decisions as inflation continues to surge. Guiding customers through the cost-of-living crisis is vital for the well-being of custom...

See all Richard's long reads

Richard is Commenting on

Fintech founders accuse Starling's Boden of trying to stifle innovation

  Open Banking, as a UK regulatory mandate, may perhaps fall short of initial expectation. It is unjust to label it a failure. It was known in advance that additional friction would make it less attractive than incumbent methods for payments. And, whilst SCA sought to level the field, its implementation was necessarily extended due to other tech priorities on banks as a result of the Covid pandemic. Interestingly, an increase in payment use through open banking, prior to full rollout of SCA, indicates consumers are accepting of it despite current flaws. Open banking as a concept for the industry has evolved into open finance and this continues to garner the interest of a wider section of the financial services industry. This will undoubtedly foster further innovation and competition in the banking sector and in turn it will exceed the original intentions of Open Banking.

10 Jan 2022 Reply Read article

Glen outlines pathway to live Britcoin launch

  It doesn't take years to document, prove and implement this technology. It is already in full use. It needs decision, courage, leadership and the correct technology partner; one that has a track record in this field.

11 Nov 2021 Reply Read article

Conversational Banking Is a Competitive Necessity in a Remote-Everything World

  Voice is only part of the story here. The real value comes from the technology platforms required to support speech recognition and Natural Language Processing. The "speech to text" and NLP create a simple mechanism for capture, audit, analysis and machine learning at a scale and pace not previously seen. Businesses are able to harvest knowledge from all their customer service interactions to create autonomous AI offerings with access to a vast knowledge base of information.

28 Jul 2021 Reply Read article

IBM and Visa join forces to turn billions of connected devices into points of sale

  This is an extremely interesting venture for IBM and VIsa, and yet another alert to financial services institutions to understand their digital readiness. The banks must understand that IoT should be considered as small interactions, often and at scale. It is more important they prepare their infrastructure for this. For example, we have seen that around 30-40% of consumption of their mainframe processing can be simple balance queries. Whilst a smart fridge or intelligent shoes won't disintermediate a bank from their customers, the increase in touchpoints with their systems will impact their costs significantly yet preventing a customer from connecting will encourage them elsewhere. The strategy of Open API and Mainframe Offloading is aligning to these. Enabling customers to connect anything with their finances yet allowing banks to efficiently manage the infrastructure and associated costs.

17 Feb 2017 Reply Read article