Recently in Financial services Category
Last week I spoke at the annual meeting of a division of a major bank. It was a one-hour event, with a live audience of several hundred, and a few thousand who worked in other locations watching via a live webcast. Given the pace of change in their business and their overt focus on innovation,
Continuing my ongoing coverage of the state of equity crowdfunding, news is just out that a Republican bill proposing that crowdfunding be allowed will get support from the White House. This is not too surprising given the White House recently explicitly supported crowdfunding in the context of the Obama Jobs bill, but is still a
Continue reading Latest: Equity crowdfunding coming shortly? Congress offers bipartisan support
The September issue of Harvard Business Review focused on complexity, with several excellent articles. One of the pieces was an interview with Michael J. Mauboussin, the chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management, whose investment approach is fundamentally based on understanding complexity. His answer to the last question in the interview was very interesting:
Continue reading Why diverse viewpoints are critical in dealing with complexity
This morning I gave the opening keynote for an internal future strategy session at a large insurance company. A group of 40 executives from across the organization, as part of a six month program, are spending two days immersing themselves in thinking about how the structure of the economy could change in the years and
Financial services is one of the most industries in which the use of social media is the most relevant, not least because customer service is a critical differentiator between highly commoditized offerings. While financial services and banking were traditionally highly relationship-based, the shift to online has significantly eroded those relationships. Social media, used well, provides
Continue reading Research: The acceleration of Australian banks’ use of social media
Back in the late 1990s I did considerable work applying scenario planning to financial risk management, using qualitative approaches to managing risk as a complement to quantitative methodologies such as Value at Risk. However financial institutions were generally very slow to acknowledge the value of anything not fully quantified, so I shifted my attention to
In my misspent youth I worked in international equities sales for Merrill Lynch. That was when I was first introduced to the Capital Asset Pricing Model that still underpins investment analysis today. Aong other things the model suggests that the return on an investment needs to be commensurate with its risk to attract investors. Through
Continue reading US equities: zero gains over the last 12 years, how about the next 12 years?
My friend and fellow futurist Gerd Leonhard, who runs The Futures Agency (which I am part of), was recently in Sydney for a speaking engagement. We took the opportunity to record a series of conversations on the future. Here is our conversation on the future of money. The key points we make are:
It is some years now since ‘expert networks’ have become a significant force, linking subject matter experts in science, technology, and business to clients, largely in funds management and finance, usually at very healthy hourly rates. Clients such as hedge funds that are investing in particular sectors or companies want to know more about issues
Continue reading The state of expert networks and the rising role of LinkedIn
This is significant. While talk doesn’t necessarily lead to action, a significant shift in capitalism could be coming. On Wednesday US SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro sent a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight Committee. The letter is embedded at the bottom of this post. Many have focused on the potential from
Continue reading SEC opens the gates to crowdfunding and a new structure of capitalism
I first met Tom Stewart in 1998 when I was involved in bringing him to Australia to speak about intellectual capital to the local business and finance community. We became friends and we kept in touch while he moved on from his role at Fortune magazine to become editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, and then
The main reason I haven’t been able to blog or Twitter much over the last week is that I am currently on a national speaking roadshow for a major financial services firm, hitting five cities in six business days, ending today. The firm is building relationships with its key financial advisors, hosting dinners in the
Continue reading Seven trends driving the future of financial advice
Gideon Gartner has just posted a great article titled Advisory Industry, a future redesign: the “Payment” Model, in which he draws on investment banking research pricing as a model for IT analysts and their clients. Gideon writes: So in the Wall Street model The buy-side “analysts” will work closely with their most helpful and favorite
Continue reading How IT analyst firms can learn from investment bank research pricing models
I recently read the entertaining science fiction novel The Unincorporated Man by brothers Dani and Eytan Kollin. The premise is that several hundred years in the future everyone is incorporated at birth, with the government owning 5% and parents 20%. People trade equity in themselves for their education and development, then spend their life trying
Continue reading Will there be capital markets for equity in people?
Earlier this week I did the opening keynote at the AMP Hillross annual convention, with the title of Embracing the Future. Hillross, one of the most upmarket of the wealth management networks, is seeking to lead the rest of the market by shifting to a pure fee-for-advice model, and rapidly developing a true professional culture.
Continue reading How reputation measurement will transform professional services
I am running a two-day executive program on Relationship Management for Financial Services in Kuala Lumpur on 28-29 January, organized by IBN International. The workshop will be attended by executives from a variety of local and global financial institutions in South-East Asia. Over the last few years I have spent less time on these issues
There’s a great article in the latest issue of B&T Today on how Westpac, one of Australia’s big four banks, is approaching working with its advertising and creative agencies. Here are a few choice excerpts from the article, which is well worth a read in its entirety. Jee Moon, director of brand and marketing at
Continue reading Agency co-creation: very hard to make it work but that’s where the most value lies
For my keynote at the Vision 2020 Financial Services conference last month in Mumbai I prepared some ‘quick and dirty’ scenarios for the global financial services industry landscape in 2020 from a technology perspective. Below is an overview of the content I used in my presentation. The complete slide deck from my keynote is also
Continue reading Scenario planning: strategy for the future of global financial services
I have written and been quoted many times before on the rise of a new layer of capital markets and the segmentation of venture capital. Venture capital certainly will continue to play an important role in years to come, but many major variations on the current model will emerge. One of the most important drivers
Continue reading Creating the next phase of entrepreneurial capital
I’m writing at the Vision 2020 Financial Services Sector conference in Mumbai where I’m giving the keynote speech. I’ll post a review of my presentation later, and here will post notes from the interesting speakers and my conversations on the day, combined with my own reflections. [UPDATE:] The complete write-up of my presentation Strategy for
Continue reading The Future of Financial Services – the Indian perspective
At the 2020 Vision Financial Services conference yesterday I promised I’d have the full content of my presentation here up within days. But my schedule means I probably won’t be able to get it up for a week or so, so for now I’ll just put up the slides. The usual warnings apply – my
Continue reading Keynote presentation: Creating the Future of Financial Services
It’s an extremely busy two weeks. On top of many client deadlines I have four speaking engagements in Australia and one in India this week and next. I’m about to hop on a plane to Mumbai and will be there for 24 hours – unfortunately this time I have to get back as soon as
Continue reading 24 hours in Mumbai – thought leadership seminar
It has been several years now since I have been to India, where I last ran some executive workshops on high-value relationships for some of India’s largest companies. I will be back in Mumbai next week to deliver the keynote address on The Future of Global Financial Services at the Vision 2020 Financial Services conference,
Continue reading Keynote speech in India: The Future of Global Financial Services
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced new guidelines (available in the next week or two) that will recognize the role of blogs in disclosing investor-sensitive information to the public. Back in 2005 I wrote an update on the situation at the time on investor relations and blogging, and in 2006 I delivered
I have long been interested in how collaboration technologies are applied in financial services, having come from a career largely at Merrill Lynch and Thomson Financial, and spent much time consulting to the instittutional financial services sector. A few years ago now I ran the Collaboration in Financial Services conferences in New York and London,
Continue reading Enterprise 2.0 in Financial Services: upcoming keynote
There are countless guides to venture capital for budding entrepreneurs on the web. Marc Andreesen, the founder of the seminal VC success story Netscape and the recently launched Ning (an extremely interesting social networking platform), among many other ventures, has provided his own guide in a three part series: Part 1: VC basics and what
Continue reading The coming segmentation of venture capital as an asset class
Om Malik has a very interesting article on how pre-paid mobile minutes are effectively becoming a currency across Africa. I visited South Africa three times late last year while helping a large African media conglomerate to develop its long-term strategy. At the time I wrote about how mobiles are allowing Africa to leapfrog the fixed
Continue reading Prepaid mobile airtime becomes currency in Africa – what happened to e-cash?
I’ve just found out that there’s a video stream of a keynote speech I did last year on the future of investment at the Brillient PortfolioConstruction conference. At the time I wrote about one of the key frames I used for the presentation, focusing on population growth and economic growth in the period from 1600
Yesterday I gave the keynote at a senior management offsite for a top-tier global financial services institution. One of the key issues for the organization – as for its peers – is building collaboration within and between a very diverse set of operations. Part of my presentation covered how effective organizational networks underpin the ability
Continue reading Breaking down silos and building networks in financial services
Last week’s 25th anniversary issue of BRW focused on the future 25 years forward, so not surprisingly included interviews with both Richard Watson, Chief Futurist at Future Exploration Network, and myself. The extensive interview with Richard was a fun and broad-ranging discussion on the future of technology, which unfortunately is not available online. I was
Continue reading Funds management and investment in the modular economy
A new peer-to-peer bank, Prosper.com, is launching in the US, attracting articles in both the New York Times and BusinessWeek, with the latter titling the story “The eBay of Loans”. The principle is simple – you lend to individuals at interest rates based on their credit rating, and since you’re cutting out the bank as
One of the issues I’ve spent much time on over the last decade is how financial markets buy-side/ sell-side relationships (usually those between investment banks and fund managers) are changing, and what the implications are for investment banking sales and research. My case has largely been that financial markets salespeople need to build “knowledge-based” relationships
Money is information. It would make sense that as we rapidly become hyper-connected, financial services will be transformed. Yet the pace of change – so far – has been slow. We still use notes, coins, and credit cards for most transactions. Certainly Internet banking and bill-paying is standard fare, however the promise of e-money and
A few weeks ago now I chaired the Collaboration in Financial Services Europe conference in London. The White Paper on How Collaborative Technologies are Transforming Financial Services is now available from my website. If you’re interested in the topic, the review of the original Collaboration in Financial Services conference in New York last September is
Continue reading Review of Collaboration in Financial Services Europe
In one of those cases in which there is a whole world of implications behind a seemingly small news item, an article in the Financial Times recently stated that banks are in danger of insider trading by sharing information inside the bank on credit derivatives. Trading in credit default swaps (which are essentially financial instruments
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About the Blog author
Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.
Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.
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