Speakers:

Samee Zafar, Director, Edgar Dunn, London
David Birch, Director, Consult Hyperion

For the past year, the hottest space in banking has been around mobile, thanks to iPhone apps, M-PESA and other developments in mobile payments and banking.  Here, two leading authorities in this space provide us with an insight into the latest mobile payments developments.

David G.W. Birch is a Director of Consult Hyperion, the IT management consultancy that specialises in electronic transactions.  Described by The Telegraph as "one of the world's leading experts on digital money", by The Independent as a "grade-A geek", by the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation as "one of the most user-friendly of the UK's uber-techies" and by Financial World as "mad", Dave is a member of the editorial board of the E-Finance & Payments Law and Policy Journal, a columnist for SPEED and well-known for his blogs on Digital Money and Digital Identity. He is a media commentator on electronic business issues and has appeared on BBC television and radio, Sky and other channels around the world.

Samee Zafar is a Director in Edgar Dunn's London office. His expertise covers retail banking, card issuing and acquiring, electronic payments including Internet and mobile payments. Samee has deep experience in helping clients set-up Internet and telephone based direct banking and brokerage operations including the selection and management of technology providers and outsourcing partners. Previously Samee has worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Visa International in London and New York. Samee holds a B.Sc in Physics and Mathematics from University of the Punjab in Pakistan, is a chartered accountant, and was a Commonwealth Scholar at the Cass Business School of the City University in London where he received his MBA in Finance. Samee is also the co-author of Developing and Managing a Successful Payments Cards Business.

Matt Colebrook,   CEO, First Direct
First Direct has been one of the UK’s leading remote banks without branches since its launch in 1989.  Celerating its 20th birthday last year year, the bank now employs 2,800 people at Stourton in Leeds.  It has one many awards, including the best call centre in the UK for customer service by independent market research company GfK NOP, and the internet bank is benefiting from the current banking turmoil as savers seek out safe havens.

“Doubling volumes every year, Zopa rocks!”

Giles Andrews, Chief Executive, Zopa

Zopa first presented to the Financial Services Club a week before they launched in March 2005.  The business idea was to create an eBay style lending platform, where those with money could lend to those who needed it in a social networking system.  Two years later, they found copies of their business idea sprouting up all around the world, and social lending was on everyone’s radar.  Since then, the road has stumbled a little, with governments and authorities forcing some of these new business structures to operate with lending licences, even though these websites do no lending themselves.  On the other hand, the credit crisis has provided some assist, with Zopa UK’s numbers shifting from £15 million of lending in 2008 to £35 million in 2009 to £75 million this year.  How is the world changing as the mixture of social lending and a credit squeeze create a perfect storm towards new business models for the future?  In a welcome return to the Club, Giles Andrews provides us with his view.

Giles spent the first ten years of his career in the motor industry pursuing his interest in all things automotive. This included co-founding Caverdale in 1992, a start-up taken to a £250m turnover and renamed Godfrey Davis Motor Group. He then set up his own consultancy business whose clients included Tesco and Tesco Personal Finance. Giles co-founded Zopa in 2005, led four fundraisings as CFO and then led the UK business as MD before taking over as CEO in 2009.

“How does a credit rating agency work?”

Roberto Rivero, Head of Market Development Rating Services, Standard & Poor’s

With the recent downgrading of Greece by Standard & Poor’s, the European markets imploded, Germany was subjected to a humiliating stand-down with France, the euro lost most of its value, and there were real concerns that the Eurozone may come to an end. 

These fears proved to be over-stated, but it did show the real power that credit rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s have over the markets.

So what are credit rating agencies really all about and how do they work?

·         What is the role and meaning of a rating?

·         What have ratings firms learnt from recent market events?

·         What are the independent and regulatory measures being used to restore market confidence in ratings

·         A glimpse at what's to come: future trends

Roberto Rivero is responsible for Marketing and Investor Relations for Standard & Poor’s Rating Services in the EMEA region. His 25-year career has included senior positions in Sales, Marketing and Product Development.  More recent roles include Head of Sales & Marketing at the London Stock Exchange, Product Marketing Director at Fidessa and Head of Product Management & Marketing at Thomson Financial.

 “How banks should think about technology and innovation”

JP Rangaswami, Chief Scientist, BT Group

Banks are critically challenged by market stability right now and so will any be thinking about innovation, or should they be?  For many, the answers will be 'no' but these banks will be seriously weakened in terms of competitiveness and customer attraction by the banks that are innovating.  But even if a bank wants to innovate, what should they do and is all innovation about technology?  Find out on Tuesday 23rd February by joining us for an evening with JP Rangaswami, the Chief Scientist of BT Group and former CIO Innovator of the Year with DRKW.

JP Rangaswami is Chief Scientist for BT Group. Prior to joining BT in 2006, JP was Global CIO at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Originally an economist and financial journalist, he has worked with technology in finance since 1980 with a number of large multinationals. He was named CIO of the Year by Waters Magazine in 2003, and CIO Innovator of the Year by the European Technology Forum in 2004. In 2007 & 2008, JP was selected as one of technology's 50 most influential individuals in the silicon.com Agenda Setters poll. JP was chosen for "vision and innovation rarely seen in CIOs."  JP is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the British Computer Society, and keeps an entertaining blog: Confused of Calcutta (in homage to his birthplace).

“Technology Trends: High Frequency Trading”

High-Frequency Trading, HFT, is a relatively recent arrival in the trading of equities and other financial instruments.  HFT uses a set of computerised trading strategies to make trades in extremely short position-holding periods.  This is why there are now a million trade movements per second in the London markets and up to ten million per second in the US markets.

The basis of HFT is to use low latency computing and high-speed processing to analyse massive amounts of market data.   Sophisticated algorithms then exploit trading opportunities, arbitrage, that may open up for only a fraction of a second on the markets.  The programs can even inspect major orders as they come in – large institutional orders for pension and mutual funds, for example – and jump ahead of the queue to skim off profits. 

This is a practice known as flash trading, and is now coming under the regulator’s magnifying glass, particularly after the ‘flash crash’ of May this year.

On 6th May, US markets fell into a trillion dollar freefall. Accenture’s shares fell from $41 at 2:30 that afternoon to just one cent each by 2:47 whilst Apple’s shares soared 40,000 per cent to reach $100,000 each during the same twenty minute period. Overall, the US stock market lost 9 per cent of value before rebounding just as fast.

So, what is the current state of HFT and flash trading, and what are the real implications of such trading strategies?  An esteemed panel of experts will be gathered to review and discuss.