BankThink

How to Leverage Social Media in 2013

12/17/12

Know where - and when - your bank's target audience goes online for information and social interaction. It's better to have just two social media channels that are well-supported than five left unattended.

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AIG to Have (Another) Share Sale; Fiscal Cliff Update; Draghi Named FT's Person of the Year

12/17/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ... AIG Is Having (Another) Share Sale: The newly private (or perhaps newly re-private) AIG is set to sell its shares in Asian life insurer AIA. Prices have yet to be set, but the sale is expected to net the company anywhere from $6.4 billion to $6.7 billion, depending on what paper you ask. AIG told Dealbook it will "sell the shares to institutional investors" and "use the proceeds from the deal for...

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What Marketing Execs Blame for Banks' Bad Reps

12/14/12

Capital and liquidity challenges, subprime mortgages and bad financial performance hurt reputation over the last year. But many executives agree their companies' management of the financial crisis had the biggest negative impact on their public image.

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UBS Near Libor Settlement; The Case Against 'Arthur Andresen'-ing HSBC

12/14/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

UBS Settlement: The Swiss bank is negotiating a deal with international regulators in which it will pay $1 billion in fines for manipulating Libor, the papers report. UBS' Japanese unit will enter a guilty plea to a criminal charge, the first such capitulation by a bank in over a decade, according to the New York Times. "Federal prosecutors are trying to strike a balance," the paper says. "By levying a charge against...

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What Banks Must Do to Stand Out in a Commoditized Digital Market

12/14/12

Rather than invest heavily in one big risky project, banks should concentrate on many small innovations, beta test them and invest where customer feedback is positive.

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Behind Big Banks' Risk-Test Failures: Bad Governance or Overly Stringent Standards?

12/13/12

Some readers quickly labeled all 19 megabanks' failure to pass the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's new risk tests as evidence that "Too Big to Fail" remains very much alive. Others blamed the OCC's stricter standards.

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Small Banks Will Face New Risks in 2013

12/13/12

Banks are assuming greater risk on the strategic side, by entering unfamiliar product territory, and on the cost side, by devoting fewer resources for risk management.

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Fed Ties Rates to Jobless; Allbritton Dies

12/13/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Rates Tied to Unemployment: Holy mackerel. The Delphic confusion of Fedspeak past vanished from headlines on the central bank's policy statement Wednesday. Both the Journal and the Times went with "Fed Ties Rates to Joblessness," and FT wasn't far off (different font, different space to fill, presumably). ...

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How to Develop a Solid Stress Testing Program

12/13/12

This platform will need to be enterprise-level to ensure consistency in the application of economic scenarios, model use and reporting.

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Integrating Mobile and Branch Banking Will Increase Customer Loyalty

12/12/12

If U.S. banks can decrease costs in routine transactions, they will be able to serve mass segments more profitably and invest disproportionately in high-margin services for the affluent.

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