US mobile banking take-up being hampered by set-up issues

US banks need to improve instructions and set-up processes if they are to attract customers to their mobile services, according to research from Change Sciences Group.

In a review of the mobile sites offered by 10 leading banks, the firm ranks Bank of America as the best, followed by Citi and Wells Fargo. HSBC is at bottom of the list, narrowly beaten by SunTrust.

Change Sciences Group says that 60% of sites fail to answer at least one question that users have. Meanwhile, 90% lack content that some users consider persuasive and 30% have some navigation design challenges.

Steve Ellis, Change Sciences Group, says: "Consumers are wary of new technologies, expecting set-up hassles that outweigh the benefits of the service. With mobile banking, the pool of early adopters is shrinking. The burden is now on banks to make mobile banking set-up clear and easy."

Human error blamed for Euronext outage

Nyse Euronext has blamed human error for a 40 minute outage in its European cash markets on Thursday, which appears to be "unrelated to any system of software components".

Operator error led to a shutdown of certain processes on trading units that match equities, bonds and ETFs, leading to a market outage during the afternoon.

During this time new orders were automatically rejected and the status of the order book unchanged. The exchange operator says it does not anticipate any trades being cancelled.

The problem was resolved by the end of trading, with all units available again at that time.

Square and the Smooth Swipe

By now it is well known that the Square payment system makes it easy and affordable for both individuals and businesses of any size to accept credit card payments.

But did you know paying with Square is...sexy?

That's the message of Square's newest viral video, in which Square's martini-sipping founder Jack Dorsey (as "Jackson Walker") demonstrates the system's "smooth, even, steady" swipe and sign technique, to the bemusement of both the bartender and a hot blonde on the next stool.

Cheers!

Bank of America programmer accused of file theft in lawsuit

A former Bank of America (BofA) programmer has been accused of stealing confidential files the day before he was due to be fired from the financial institution.

Rao Chalasani, an IT worker within the bank’s global markets portfolio management group, is alleged to have sent an e-mail to a personal account containing 21 files.

According to the law suit, Mr Chalasani is believed to have sent the message the day before the bank was due to announce 400 redundancies, including his own.

In the court papers, which were quoted by Reuters, the bank said: “The files attached to [the] defendant's email all contain confidential and proprietary, non-public information concerning BofA, including profit and loss figures for different lines of its businesses throughout the world.”

The files are thought to have contained information on the bank’s “current trading positions in numerous securities and the company's assessment of risk”.

BofA discovered the message as part of a security review into large files sent by company employees to outside e-mail addresses.

The bank announced it was to make cuts to its investment banking division in September.

Road Trip or Staying Put? Why training in-house makes sense

By Richard Barr – Principal Associate at Citadel Advantage.

The benefits of in-house training are obvious yet few managers explore that option. An organization’s staff is its greatest asset. In-house training allows an organization to minimize costs while increasing its effectiveness and impact on staff.

A quick internet search shows that a 2-day public training course for the banking sector, in Europe, cost on average EUR 1,665 per person (I found it to be between EUR 1,495 & EUR 1,995), but you also need to cover other expenses such as hotel, airfare & per diem allowances. So rather than write a book on the benefits of in-house training, I’m going to let the financial numbers prove my point.

Let’s use the modest quantity of 10 participants to train.

• The fee on a public course is 10 people X EUR 1,665 = EUR 16,650. 
• Unless you’re lucky enough to have the desired course where you’re located hotel accommodation for 10 people in a reasonable establishment for 2 nights would cost another EUR 150 per night per room, equaling EUR 3,000.
• Airfares vary greatly but let’s say you’re using one of the budget airlines so each ticket is a mere EUR150. We times that by 10 people to get EUR 1,500. 
• Let’s do ground transport on a budget as well and use bus, train or underground to get to & from the airports, as well as between our hotel & course venue. Let’s use the miserly sum of EUR 50 per person or EUR 500 for the group. 
• People have to eat. Lunch is usually covered in the course fees and breakfast at the hotel. This leaves Dinner. Let’s be mingy on that and only give each employee EUR 20 per day. That’s EUR 25 X 2 days X 10 people = 500.

Adding all those components gives us a total figure of EUR 22,150 for 10 employees to attend a single 2-day public training course.

On top of that you need to add lost days for travel time.

Now let’s bring the trainer to your location and look at the costs of training those same 10 employees in-house. It’s a little trickier to find outside sources so I’ll use what my firm charges, as well as show the other expenses.

• 2-day training course for 10 participants, including trainer’s airfare, ground transport & per diem allowance is EUR 6,995.
• 3 nights hotel for the trainer is EUR 450.
• Printing of course materials 10 staff X EUR 25 = EUR 250.
• If you have a conference room on premises the venue is “Free” if not, you’ll need to rent a training room. Regus does that nicely & we’ve used them on occasion. The 2 days including breaks (coffee/tea & biscuits) and lunches would cost about EUR 1,200.

Adding all those parts, we get a total figure of EUR 8,895 for 10 employees to attend a 2-day in-house training course.

And ZERO lost days for travel time.

That’s EUR 8,895 vs. EUR 22,150 ! By holding an event in-house with the same course, same trainer, and same participants you are going to save yourself EUR 13,255. You are going to pay a mere 40% of what a public course will cost.

Now let’s expand that number of participants by 7 times. How much more one can save by training in-house? I can tell you because we’ve had clients do just that.

• Public course: 70 people would cost a whopping EUR 155,050. 
• In-house: 70 people is too many for a successful course so we split the 70 staff members into three groups and held the same course 3 times in succession. Total cost to the client EUR 29,900.

In other words for the same EUR 29,900 you can either train 13 employees on a public course or 70 employees in-house. Which makes more sense to you?

oOo

For details of how we can help you with your training needs please feel free to contact Richard directly at richard@citadeladvantage.com or at courses@citadeladvantage.com

Rwandan remittances up by 16% in 2010

Rwanda expects its citizens abroad to send back US$200 million in remittances this year, 16 percent higher than last year's $172.43 million, its deputy central bank governor said on this week.

Claver Gatete of Rwanda's Central Bank said in an interview that remittances was $126.07 million as of July 2010, thanks to changes in rules aimed at simplifying the process.

"Given the fact that we are at this level, we are going to way exceed the money we received last year, projecting to reach $200 million. This is because we have liberalized the process and the maximum amount," Gatete said.

Prior to 2009, individuals were allowed to send a maximum of $2,000 through money transfer agents like Western Union, while sums above that had to go through a bank account.

"Money sent through Western Union and MoneyGram was $28.7 million, through commercial banks was $22.9 million and $74.5 million was moved through forex bureaus in the first seven months of this year," said Gatete, of the money sent by July this year.

Under the new rules which came into effect in 2009, there are no limits to the amount an individual can send back home through money transfer agents

The ministry of foreign affairs is yet to carry out a census to determine the number of Rwandans living out of the country but the central bank estimates the largest group, of almost 20,000, live in Belgium.

Last month, the bank said that it had put in place new payment service regulations to allow more local and international remittance service providers to participate in the business.

Previously, the agencies had to use banks to send and receive funds and some big players got the banks in exclusive contracts and blocked out other service providers.

The new rules remove these exclusive contracts and there has been a noted increase in the remittance figures, the central bank said in a statement.

A new fund called the Rwanda Diaspora Mutual Fund was licensed and launched in December 2009 with an intention to have it list securities on the Rwanda over-the-counter market, the bank said.

"A number of Rwandese living abroad have expressed their desire to invest in government securities. Process is underway to facilitate them (to) participate in the October 2010 issuance," it added in the statement.

HSBC North America ordered to improve risk management processes

HSBC North America Holdings (HNAH) has received an order from the Federal Reserve to improve its risk management procedures.

HNAH, which is a subsidiary of the British bank HSBC, has agreed to the requests by the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Under the terms of the agreement, the bank now has 30 days to submit a detailed plan of how it will strengthen its compliance risk agreement.

In a statement, HNAH said: “These actions require improvements for an effective compliance risk management program across the company’s US business, including Bank Secrecy Act and Anti-Money Laundering compliance.”

The banking subsidiary has reorganized its reporting lines of communication in relation to its compliance program and increased investment in people, advisory services and systems surrounding compliance in response to the Fed’s request.

HNAH has also reduced its investment in areas which are not deemed central to its business.

HSBC Bank USA previously stated that HNAH was subject to an investigation by both US regulatory agencies and government bodies.