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It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

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Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#131

Post by rurp »

ohazi wrote: post #66
tvanantwerp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. My wife works in private banking, and her descriptions to me of the IT/software environment they have to deal with are absurd. Recently, the integration of a new loan management system was badly botched and several clients have been hit by it. Bills not going out, therefore not being paid, therefore money being taken forcibly from their accounts without notice. And these are customers with millions each i…

Why is it always the "notifying" part that breaks with shitty software like this, and not the "money being taken forcefully" part, which always seems to work flawlessly? Doesn't that seem a little suspicious? If they were uniformly bad at writing software, the critical money handling part should fail at roughly the same rate. If they can get that part to work reliably, failure of other parts of the system seem partic…

It's possible the withdrawals do break sometimes, but undercharging people results in far fewer irate phone calls.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#132

Post by technofiend »

malthaus wrote: post #94
raesene9 wrote: post #12

I'm of the opinion that all banks should be technology companies, in that pretty much all of their operations rely on computing, so the better they are at developing and operating computer systems they better they'll be able to do business. Unfortunately, many banks (at least in the UK market) seem to see IT as some kind of overhead, to be minimized in cost and/or outsourced (e.g. Lloyds outsourcing to IBM https://ww…

The problem is legacy culture & systems. Theres almost no chance of a transformation unless a paradigm shift in senior management thinking takes place. Maintaing their mess costs massively and large projects carry risks and a bad track record no one on top can support. Too bad the fintech revolution lost some of its momentum challenging the profitable areas of banking

>The problem is legacy culture & systems.

I'd argue regulatory oversight also makes innovation and risk taking less viable because every failure will be noticed and require explanation, which puts a damper on "fail fast." You can fail fast internally during your SDLC but doing so in front of an external customer is an extraordinarily bad idea.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#133

Post by PeterisP »

shkkmo wrote: post #82
lugg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what do newspapers and cable news have in common with each other that Facebook doesn't?

They pay reporters.

Quite many of them don't, many (most?) not-top newspapers re-publish news gathered by others; many (most?) cable companies don't produce any news content themselves but just provide access to a bunch of news channels. Those still are media companies.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#134

Post by yourapostasy »

dopamean wrote: post #129
shreyanshd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in technology for an investment bank and i hear “we are not a technology company” every quarter. Ironically, the tech we develop is a major factor, if not the only factor, for revenue. My motivation is instantly shattered when i hear that.

How could you say that the tech you develop might be the only factor in revenue calculations? That makes no sense to me in investment banking.

If tech really is the differentiator, then hearing that means tech staff won’t get commensurately compensated for delivering that decisive factor to the revenue mix.

The rules of old business still applies in most organizations: the closer you are to the transactional point where money changes hands, the more you make. This many times means sales, then management, then finance, then marketing, then engineering, then back office.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#136

Post by Stranger43 »

raesene9 wrote: post #70
tvanantwerp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. My wife works in private banking, and her descriptions to me of the IT/software environment they have to deal with are absurd. Recently, the integration of a new loan management system was badly botched and several clients have been hit by it. Bills not going out, therefore not being paid, therefore money being taken forcibly from their accounts without notice. And these are customers with millions each i…

My theory has always been that the people in senior positions at these companies tend to be older and have come up through the ranks before IT was quite as integral to their operations. So they don't understand technology and therefore tend to not take it as seriously as they should. That said, that argument starts to hold less water these days. I had my first job in a web-focused bank 18 years ago now! One of the co…

I studied business school in the mid 00s where most textbooks/classes still insisted that IT systems could be procured as standardized off the shelf products, despite the fact that all serious studies show that process management* and IT systems form a symbiotic relationship that makes it almost impossible to change one without the other.

*Business management is process management for most organizations.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#137

Post by tomc1985 »

friday99 wrote: post #122
tomc1985 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly a fair comparison, considering Google's extensive non-advertising product offerings

Those "other revenues" only account for about 13% of Google's revenue. So its a fair comparison. Google is almost 90% an advertising company. https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/2017Q4_alphabet_earnings_releas...

Yes because all those apps exist... to funnel people towards Google's extensive advertising network, so the money shows up as adbiz revenue instead of with products.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#138

Post by hamstercat »

shreyanshd wrote: post #98
organsnyder wrote: post #9

I work for a large healthcare system, and the "we're not a tech company" line is often heard. At many levels, I agree—we're in the business of delivering healthy outcomes to our communities, so we need to make sure that efforts across the enterprise support that—but it is often applied in ways that stifle us from delivering what we feel would be the most impactful and cost-effective solutions. I like to respond that…

I work in technology for an investment bank and i hear “we are not a technology company” every quarter. Ironically, the tech we develop is a major factor, if not the only factor, for revenue. My motivation is instantly shattered when i hear that.

I used to work in another financial-related company and "IT is a cost not a revenue center" was thrown around as often as possible. Raise, promotion, formation, a computer made in this decade, anything really would get us that answer. Not only from my boss, but from the IT's top director in various meetings and one-on-one. I used to find it highly frustrating and unfair given that the company would cease to exists without our software, and that all new customers were acquired through new development in our software.

Now that I'm older and not working there anymore, I understand that it's a culture problem and that management just didn't know any better, but I've come to accept the fact that it was a great way to cut costs and get away with it. After all, they still have many employees and manage to make more profit year after year. It just made for a very demotivating environment.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#139

Post by ucaetano »

justjico wrote: post #119
organsnyder wrote: post #9

I work for a large healthcare system, and the "we're not a tech company" line is often heard. At many levels, I agree—we're in the business of delivering healthy outcomes to our communities, so we need to make sure that efforts across the enterprise support that—but it is often applied in ways that stifle us from delivering what we feel would be the most impactful and cost-effective solutions. I like to respond that…

100% Agree. It’s like saying Coca-Cola is not a marketing company, they sell beverages. Or Apple is not a “design” company, they sell hardware. sigh

> It’s like saying Coca-Cola is not a marketing company, they sell beverages.

They don't even sell beverages. Their (mostly) independently-owned bottlers do!

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