U.S. FINANCIAL MARKETS: BOTH LAGGARDS AND TRENDSETTERS

U.S. capital markets typically define how the rest of the world markets operate; more financial investments are made in the U.S. than in any other country. But this supremacy hasn’t always translated to leading business and technology practices. There are situations where U.S. markets are lagging behind or have operated with known issues, and it’s important to understand where the pitfalls are/were:  

 

Decimalisation of stocks – Unlike other markets, U.S. stocks were quoted in fractions (e.g. price of stock XYU is $4 1/16 instead of $4.18) instead of decimals until 2001.  A quote in fractions results in market inefficiency, higher costs and price manipulation.  

TRADE FINANCE: THE KEY TO UNLOCKING GLOBAL ECONOMIC GROWTH

Vincent O’Brien, Chair of the International Chambers of Commerce (ICC) Banking Commission’s Market Intelligence Group, discusses the findings of the two recent ICC reports: Global Survey 2014 – Rethinking Trade and Finance and the Trade Register Report 2014.  The ICC has long been an advocate of trade finance as a means to unlocking global economic growth. Our two most recent reports have, however, added fuel to our fire with respect to providing useable data that both the market and policy-makers can use when assessing the impact of trade finance.

Together, the Global Survey 2014: Rethinking Trade and Finance (the “Survey”) and the Trade Register Report 2014 (the “Register”), form a powerful body of work for the ICC’s advocacy of trade finance as a low risk financing technique, aimed at fostering global economic growth.

FOREX TRADING FOUNDATIONS: MANAGING MONEY AND RISK

To mark Admiral Market’s first birthday, Chris explains the importance of clear money and risk management in a trader’s first 12 months.

Profitability within the first year of Forex trading is a realistic and attainable target for novice retail traders. But this outcome is dependant on many different factors. As an education Forex strategist, there is one aspect of trading which many beginners fail to develop: a professional money and risk management strategy.

It sounds daunting, but developing these systems and strategies is much easier than one might think. Those traders who take the time to develop a methodology of protecting their capital are demonstrating one key trait which separates the winners and losers in Forex trading. It’s called ‘professionalism’. Those who treat Forex as their profession always do better than those who dedicate no time to performing the basics competently.

BANKING TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTS BUILDING SOCIETY GROWTH

From my unique vantage point of serving both UK building societies and European banks, I can see that societies typically differ from banks in the way they approach technology. Traditionally, mutuals have been very good at maintaining solid and reliable systems to underpin their core business. But where building societies have scored less highly to date compared to banks, arguably, is in using technology to drive innovation.

 

It hasn’t always been this way: Nottingham was one of the first users of e-banking in the world, but it does seem to be the general rule of thumb that this side of the UK financial services market has been slow to use technology as aggressively as their banking counterparts. The opportunity for societies over the months ahead is to redress that balance – not so much by following where banks have gone before them, but in delivering the most appropriate experiences for their own customers both retail and intermediary, so that everyone continues to deliver growth.

WHY BIG DATA IS DRIVING THE INSURANCE SECTOR TO THE CLOUD

market to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 31 per cent to be worth nearly $24 billion in 2016, it is important that businesses understand that to unlock the true potential of big data they need to implement a cloud strategy first.

 

 

It is clear that a growing number of business leaders are turning to the cloud to help gain a competitive edge for their organisations as well as looking for new and efficient ways of working. In 2013 a study by KPMG study revealed that the use of cloud dominated boardroom planning, with  42 per cent of UK organisations revealing that at least one-fifth of their total IT spend in the next 12 months would focus on cloud services. However while the business benefits of moving to the cloud may be clear for many, insurers are finding the challenge of marrying data, security and the cloud a tricky one.

SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE SAVING THE ECONOMY

Faced with the challenge of an explosion of data from macro trends like social media, mobile, the Internet of Things, and Big Data, many organisations are faced with snowballing technology requirements and yet declining IT budgets that mean doing more with less.

 

Storage is often the highest single line item in these reduced or static IT budgets, making the strategy of throwing more storage hardware at the data explosion problem less and less acceptable. Many of today’s organisations, such as picturemaxx, University of Sussex and the Institut of Laue Langevin have found a way to step away from such a MESS (massively expensive storage systems) solution and have discovered more scalable, flexible, available and cost effective storage solutions – Software-Defined Storage (SDS) solutions.

Open Source SDS solutions can be deployed in conjunction with industry standard hardware, avoiding the vendor lock-in of expensive proprietary models. This gives organisations the freedom to choose their hardware, ensuring they always get the right hardware their requirements and with the right price.  Democratising infrastructure in this way delivers cost savings of up to 80%.

COST OF UK CREDIT CARD DEBT COULD BE HALVED WITH ALTERNATIVE FINANCE

UK consumers pay £3.2 billion per annum too much on expensive credit card debt annually, warns peer to peer (P2P) lending firm Madiston LendLoanInvest.  This is despite a wealth of alternative finance options, like P2P lending, being available on the market that could reduce borrowing costs.  Madiston LendLoanInvest has built a unique debt consolidation process into its peer to peer lending which gives lenders accurate information about the proposed loan and doesn’t disadvantage borrowers in the calculation.

Annual credit card interest costs borrowers around £6.04 billion, based on an average interest rate of 17.1 per cent, with the typical UK consumer holding up to five cards each. If UK borrowers considered consolidating  credit card debt with a P2P loan on a site like Madiston LendLoanInvest at around 8 per cent, then as much as £3.22 billion could be wiped off their 

credit card bills, leaving a drastically reduced debt cost of £2.82 billion per annum.