Banking Business Lloyds Services Tsb

What can banks do to survive and thrive in today's uncertain economy? This important book has the answers. Retail Banking Technology reveals the tactics and strategies that banks, large and small, can use to realign their retail banking organizational structure. It explains how banks must make the transformation from passive, account-holding, transaction-processing institutions to aggressive, customer-focused, service-oriented organizations. Two essential components emerge in the analysis of this transformation - customers and information. The key to unlocking retail banking success and sustaining the richest payoffs of automation is a customer-driven focus on the identification, acquisition, and integration of information. The practical core of Retail Banking Technology is that bank technology must be perfectly pitched to the needs and expectations of the customer. Everything the bank of the 90s will do must serve or benefit the customer - at a profit to the bank. And these actions must capitalize on the recognition that integrated information - not blind computation - illuminates the most effective means of serving the customer - at a profit to the bank. Retail Banking Technology also covers these important topics: using technology to develop and differentiate bank products and services; integrating "enriched" customer information to facilitate cross selling, target marketing, and true relationship banking; the changing roles of DP, MIS, and bank technology experts; and recognizing how bank marketing and sales systems can serve to attract new customers and market share. Retail Banking Technology is packed with case studies as well as innovative uses of conventional technology andenhanced systems.

In today's world of electronic cash transfers, automated teller machines, and credit cards, the image of the musty, junk-laden pawnshop seems a relic of the past. But it is not. The 1980s witnessed a tremendous boom in pawnbroking. There are now more pawnshops than ever before in U.S. history, and they are found not only in large cities but in towns and suburbs throughout the nation. As John Caskey demonstrates in Fringe Banking, the increased public patronage of both pawnshops and commercial check-cashing outlets signals the growing number of American households now living on a cash-only basis, with no connection to any mainstream credit facilities or banking services. Fringe Banking is the first comprehensive study of pawnshops and check-cashing outlets. It profiles their operations, their customers, and their recent growth from small family-owned shops to such successful outlet chains as Cash America and ACE America's Cash Express. Further, it explains why, in spite of interest rates and fees that are substantially higher than those of banks, their use has so dramatically increased. According to Caskey, declining family earnings, changing family structures, a growing immigrant population, and lack of household budgeting skills greatly reduced the demand for bank deposit services among millions of Americans. In addition, banks responded to 1980s regulatory changes by increasing fees on deposit accounts with small balances and closing branches in numerous poor urban areas. These factors combined to leave many low- and moderate-income families without access to checking privileges, credit services, and bank loans. Pawnshops and check-cashing outlets provide such families with essentialfinancial services they cannot obtain elsewhere, and often meet additional needs by selling money orders, arranging wire transfers of funds, and handling utilities payments.