"As I sat there on that horrible Monday, watching the whole financial world on the brink of collapse, I thought back to all the midnight oil I’d burnt writing these columns, all the crappy hotels I’d stayed in while making various television shows. And how all of that revenue would be lost for a raft of reasons I simply didn’t understand.
Of course I made strenuous efforts to get my money out of AIG as soon as the scale of its problems became apparent. But it wasn’t possible. It had shut the fund in which I’d invested and it would remain closed for three months while it tried to sell the assets. “We need to do this in an orderly fashion,” said the man on the phone, calmly.
Inwardly I was screaming. I don’t give a shit about an orderly fashion, any more than a man in the trenches wants to look smart while running for his life. It’s my money. I gave it to you. You’ve squandered it on a Mexican’s house in San Diego and a stupid football team and that’s your problem. Not mine.
It turned out, however, that I was wrong. It was my problem, so I decided to try to understand banking. And what I’ve gleaned from a two-week crash course is that it is completely unfathomable. There isn’t a single person in the entire world who has the first idea how the system works."
Posted by Ed Cotton
From Paul Kedrosky
Posted by Ed Cotton
Posted by Ed Cotton
"At the beginning of last year, Ms Oppenheimer poached Helen Dodd, a retail design expert, from Tesco.
Ms Dodd, who has spent 20 years working out how to attract customers to shops and keep them there, trooped 250 Barclays customers and staff through the Northampton warehouse to test the new layout and technology.
Nothing was sacred, not even the good old British queue with the black tape barriers. The new Manchester branch is experimenting with a ying-yang-shaped queue, broken up by waist-height pillars housing computer games. The branch's space-age information desk is pure Apple store, while, according to Ms Dodd: “We're trialling a lot of different queueing methodologies - people do PhDs on this stuff.”
The childrens' play area is inspired by the Science Museum. There is no glass separating tellers from customers, to stop people from raising their voices, something that Ms Dodd believes makes banking more stressful.
Curves are used to make customers feel “warmer”, while the glass frontage will make women more inclined to enter. “At the moment, they don't feel welcomed into branches,” Ms Dodd said. Concierges, dressed in uniforms by the designer Jeff Banks, will issue customers with tickets telling them how long they must wait and even if they would be served more quickly if they went to another branch.
Getting the right doormat was key - customers like dry feet, so Ms Dodd found a mat that dried wet soles within four steps. The Manchester branch operates to the same timetable as other retailers, with late night and weekend opening."
Posted by Ed Cotton
Smarty Pig is a site that helps people save for specific goals and allows friends and family to contribute to those savings plans.
Traditional banks should look at this because the 2.0 companies are snapping at their heels with innovations like this.
Thanks to Colin
Posted by Ed Cotton
(2) In 2006, Barclays Bank in the UK undertook an interesting experiment to try and transform the branch experience.
While most typical branch enhancements revolve around design, this transformation was all about language.
The objective was to use the materials in branch to forge a new conversation based on new language. The goal was to move from the old world of bank as powerful, but patronizing to a bank that's more approachable and human.
The whole exercise was illustrated by the shift from chained black pens to free pens with slogans.
Posted by Ed Cotton