North American FX data now available

The Foreign Exchange Committee (FXC) has released the results of its twelfth Survey of North American Foreign Exchange Volume.

You can download the survey HERE.

The FXC is made up of representatives of major financial institutions engaged in foreign currency trading in the United States and is sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Summer 2010 “Risk Management Research Report” published

The Risk Management Research Report (RMRR) is published by the School of Business at Loyola University Chicago on a quarterly basis to serve the professional and academic risk management communities by presenting extended summaries of recently published academic articles of particular interest.

RMRR seeks to select the best and most important articles in risk management and corporate governance and to communicate the essential ideas of that research to risk managers and risk management scholars in a timely manner and a convenient format.

You can download the Summer 2010 edition FREE by clicking HERE.

China is leading in mobile banking uptake - US lags behind

China is leading the world in the uptake of mobile finance, with 77% of consumers using their phones to conduct financial transactions, according to a global survey carried out by KPMG. The study found that convenience is edging out consumer concerns over privacy and security.

These are some of the results of KPMG's fourth annual Global Consumers and Convergence survey (see our IN FOCUS tab).

Compared with only 18 months ago, the global percentage of respondents who have used their mobile device for banking has more than doubled from 19% to 46%, while the percentage that have used it to buy goods and services has risen from 10% to 28%.

This surge is being led by the world's fastest-developing economies. In China, 77% of respondents say they have used their mobiles for banking and 44% for retail transactions, while in India 38% are using them to shop, and 43% for financial business.

Asia-Pacific consumers are much more likely to be heavy users of mobile online services than those in Western Europe and the US, says KPMG.

Only 19% of US consumers have conducted banking transactions on a mobile device, the study finds. This is more than double the numbers counted 18 months ago. Among naysayers, 52 percent cited security and privacy as the primary reason.

Lack of availability may also be a major inhibitor. Nearly three-quarters of US respondents said that their current bank either does not offer banking through a mobile device or that they did not know if their bank offered this service.

Carl Carande, a principal in KPMG banking and finance advisory practice, says: "To continue to spur adoption, banks may need to continue to educate consumers about the security of the mobile banking environment and further promote the availability of this vehicle that helps make banking more accessible and convenient."

Crook versus crook

In a new turn for the books a pair of cybercrooks has posted a phishing kit on hacker forums that lets them steal the data gleaned by those who download and use it, says security operation Imperva.

Imperva says the phishing kit helps crooks set up fake sites purporting to belong to organizations such as banks to dupe personal and financial data from victims.

However, unknown to these hackers, the creators of the kit use a built in back door to harvest all the credentials. While the proxy crooks may find some success before their phishing sites are closed down, the masterminds gets everything without needing to conduct an open campaign.

The cloud-based approach of the kit - developed in Algeria with Arabic tutorials but itself in English - makes it far harder to shut down than normal phishing scams, says Imperva.

In traditional schemes when you take down a server you affect not only the Web page but also the back end data collection capability. In the cloud version, data collection is hosted separately from the sites which means hackers only need to repost the front end in a new location to be back in business.

'Darth Vader' robs US bank

A man wearing a Darth Vader mask and cape robbed a Chase bank branch on Long Island on last week, police said.

The thief entered a branch in Setauket at 11:30 a.m. and demanded money from a teller. But instead of using a light saber, "Darth" threatened the teller with a semiautomatic gun.

The teller gave the robber some cash from the drawer. A customer started to battle Vader inside the bank.

Det. Sgt. William Lamb of the Suffolk County Police Department says, "They got into a bit of a physical altercation. No one was hurt."

The Darth Vader thief, described as between 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall, then took off running. In addition to the mask and cape, he was also wearing camouflage pants. He headed east through the bank's parking lot and then jumped on a bicycle and took off. Witnesses say his cape was waving behind him as he ran.

A witness said, "I thought it was just a joke but I guess he was serious."

Police have not said if Luke Skywalker has offered to help track "Vader" down.

Det. Sgt. Lamb says, "After doing this for 28 years, nothing surprises me anymore but this was a unique one."

Australian Foreign Exchange Turnover

For those FX aficionados the Australian Foreign Exchange Committee has just released its April 2010 Semi-Annual Report on Foreign Exchange Turnover


You can access this information on the Reserve Bank of Australia website by clicking HERE.

Bank of Ireland to refund €3 million to ATM users after glitch

Bank of Ireland is refunding around 43,000 ATM users a total of €3 million after a problem with anti-fraud systems saw money incorrectly debited from their accounts.

The bank is making the payments after its internal monitoring processes flagged that ATM users who forgot to take their cash from the machine were still having the money taken from their accounts.

When distracted customers fail to take cash or their cards at ATMs, the machine waits a short while before pulling the money back in with the debited amount automatically credited again.

However, for four years, until October 2009, the installation of anti-fraud measures "resulted in the normal system response of automatically prompting a refund to issue not to occur for these particular transactions" says Bank of Ireland in a statement.

It is now in the process of refunding €1.3 million to 14,000 of its own customers this week and is working with other banks to help get a further €1.7 million to 29,000 non-customers.

The bank says has apologised for the error and has informed the country's Financial Regulator.

About six people per ATM per year leave their cash, card, or both in machines.