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Samarth Shekhar

Regional Manager EMEA
SixThirty Ventures
Member since
25 Mar 2012
Location
Amsterdam
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Followed by John Sims, Martha Boyle and 5 others you follow
View Samarth Shekhar's full profile

Samarth's opinions

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Samarth Shekhar

European banks' race to shared services, open source

Further to my previous post calling for more SWIFT-style sharing of IT and back office among European Banks we now have (1) Deutsche Bank calling upon rivals to share investment banking technology; (2) ING promoting an API developer portal for building open source Retail Banking software; and (3) the ECB moving closer to a European banking union...

14 September 2012 /retail /wholesale

Samarth Shekhar

Want banking innovation? Stop hiring bankers!

The shifting landscape of providers offering banking services is likely to force the (till date) in-bred banking sector to make acquisitions outside, bringing in leaders with techno-business backgrounds at the helm of bread-and-butter businesses divisions rather than just at the fringes (e.g. "Head of Mobile Banking") as has been the cas...

27 August 2012 /retail

Samarth Shekhar

Retail banking: sexy again?

After five years of rehab, Citigroup has certainly figured out which side its bread is buttered and decided to go back to the old darling of banking, perhaps leaving the dealmakers licking their wounds. Not only are the "too big" banks whether in the US or Europe making the right noises about a strong Retail Bank as the core of their bus...

21 August 2012 /retail

Samarth Shekhar

Time to SWIFTize European Banks

Europe, this patched up network of countries with different political and cultural backgrounds is of course hard to unite. But what’s taking so much time for European banks – creaking with costs, shuddering at upcoming compliance requirements – to realize that they need to do something FAST, and TOGETHER – to stay afloat? Within IT and operations (...

05 August 2012

Samarth Shekhar

Bankers and their IT: cozying up in bad times?

Fact #1: Revenue per Employee in 2011 dropped to half of their 2006 levels in 2011 for some top European investment banks. Fact #2: The EU FS sector will spend between €33.3bn-€50Bn over the next three years simply to comply with new regulatory demands. Ongoing crises, falling revenues and looming compliance costs - could these be the common enem...

27 July 2012

Samarth Shekhar

Investing in innovation- IT needs to think lean

Banking IT leaders need to think “Lean”. For nearly a decade, banking IT has been trying to transform from a back-office implementor to a business enabler. With banks almost always in crisis in the last five years, budget restrictions and a strict cost-control regime are the order of the day. So is IT just going to keep the “lights on”? If IT lead...

24 June 2012

Samarth Shekhar

Five tips for banks running the Ironman Triathlon

European banks and their IT leaders will spend the next several months trying to run a virtual triathlon (for those interested in the real one, please Google “Frankfurt Ironman”) comprising: Achieve prescribed capital adequacy ratio and survive the crisis- hoping the eurozone is still around Reduce IT (and other) costs Execute mandatory compliance...

27 May 2012

Samarth Shekhar

Compliance: a money-spinner for Tier-1 banks?

The huge spend required for some of the compliance programs for European banks seems set to divide banks into two extremes: - small and medium banks who simply cannot afford it, and may decide to get out of certain businesses or buy outsourced services - big banks who can: and may even end up making money selling white-labelled services to the &quo...

08 May 2012

Samarth Shekhar

Old car exchange scheme for platform renewal

European banks are teeming with legacy platforms- inflexible, expensive, long time-to-market and ageing skilled workforce. Providers and package vendors who propose to change this are stuck given the budget situation. Is it time for a "return your old car and get a discount on a shiny new one" scheme? Here is the vicious circle: bank nee...

01 May 2012

Samarth Shekhar

Top nightmares that your Head of Payments won't talk about

What's keeping Head of Payments/Cash Management at European banks awake at night? I take a first shot - no hard feelings- and request readers to add on: 1.) Some bloke in the boardroom asks me how we are leveraging the information around payments transactions. 2.) Fast forward 3 years- searching for "Head of Payments" on job sites yields...

22 April 2012 /payments

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Samarth writes about

  • payments
  • retail banking
  • wholesale banking
  • start ups

Samarth's opinion archive

  • 2014 (1)
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  • 2012 (11)

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