Latest opinions that Alex Bray has shared on Finextra

Join the Community

24,022

Expert opinions

40,653

Total members

344

New members (last 30 days)

200

New opinions (last 30 days)

29,278

Total comments

Join Sign in

Alex Bray

AVP, Omni-Channel Acquisition & Servicing

Genpact

Member since

05 Feb 2011

Location

London

View Alex Bray's full profile

Alex's opinions

Is Social Media a Channel?

I see and hear this a lot nowadays - in presentations and conversations. To be honest, apart from the questionable grammar of the question, I think the answer is pretty simple - NO! But scratch away at that simple answer and a more interesting question lies beneath… Why do we need to define channels? I worked in banking for ten years - at a time

05 March 2014 Online Banking

30th anniversary of Internet Banking: 10 tips to stay on top

The first Internet banking service was launched by the Nottingham Building Society in 1983. Thirty years on, the face of retail banking is unrecognisable, but banks still need to grasp new technologies. Here are 10 tips to stay relevant in the fast-moving world of digital banking: 1 Stop thinking channel – instead, think about a customer interactio...

25 November 2013 Online Banking

Skype-hype? Is now the time for video-chat in banking?

I worked on the first web-chat deployment at a high street bank back in 2006. At the time, we were convinced it would deliver us a range of sales and customer satisfaction benefits. And yet, it flopped. It was hard to operationalise and customers were decidedly lukewarm. I’ve been a little cynical of real-time digital communications since then, bu...

04 November 2013 Online Banking

Does IBM's 2-Factor have the X Factor for Mobile Banking?

I'm a big fan – and former employee – of Big Blue. So it's always good to see the innovations that continue to emerge out of the IBM Labs. In their latest offering, reported by Finextra last week (https://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=25338), IBM has employed NFC technology to deliver a simple customer identification and verifica...

30 October 2013 Online Banking

Is the Google Glass half full or half empty?

In February, the release of Google Glass to developers was greeted with much fanfare in the press and excitement in the blogosphere. So, was this all puff? What has happened since? Well, there is no doubt that it is still early days. After all, the actual device is not going to be commercially available until 2014. However, there are already some i...

23 October 2013 Innovation in Financial Services

The Digital Dollar - generating digital channels revenue

If banks don't develop a second generation digital channels strategy, they won't be around in 10 years time. It sounds like a bold statement, but it is a pretty safe bet. Customer behaviours, right around the world, are changing at an unprecedented pace. The effect of these changes is starting to drive a sea-change in bank strategies. Banks need 's...

21 October 2013 /retail Online Banking

An African Sunrise - new dawn of Internet Banking

It was announced this week at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation’s Annual Forum in Nigeria, that the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) is to be launched to drive down the artificially high internet prices in emerging African economies. Supported by individuals like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Web, and organisations

10 October 2013 /retail Online Banking

Sell, sell, sell! The future of Digital Banking

Digital channels are all about sales. If they aren't, then you're doing something wrong. First and foremost, banks are about creating wealth. To do that, banks need to help their customers articulate financial goals and identify financial needs. Once that has been done, banks can provide the products and services to enable customers to achieve t

20 May 2013 /retail Online Banking

Augmented Reality in FS - got your goggles?

‘Mobile banking’ is not a very precise term. Today, we know it as meaning using your mobile phone for banking. However, back in the late 1990s, all that it meant was SMS banking. If your bank was particularly advanced, it may also have meant a WAP-based mobile banking service. It has only been since the launch of smartphones in the mid-2000s, th

01 May 2013 Innovation in Financial Services

Knocking the Froth off Social Media

Social media has exploded across the financial services industry. And like many a new craze before it, it has largely been driven by the perceived need to do something, compounded by a lack of industry consensus around what that something should be. Initiatives have been launched without clear objectives. They are not targeted at specific customer...

23 January 2012 /retail Online Banking