In the third of a four-part series, Markus Sander tests the latest payments innovations. This week: cashless and cardless payments.

I'd like to introduce myself in this post. Having served in Defense for 20 years, I gained lots of experience in Crisis Management and Risk Management. Those experiences helped me in many other areas of life and profession. In Production, Marketing, and in Management I applied my previous experience and could get through successfully. I found the Global Risk community interesting and packed with lots of information. I also write of several sites on Various topics. I have written more than 630 ar

Implementation deadlines have been and gone but banks are still living in Dodd-Frank’s shadow. One of the issues is that best practice hasn’t yet been agreed: the regulators still need to clarify standards. This is leaving many fumbling around in the dark for the right route to compliance.

While the regulators iron out the standards, several financial institutions have cobbled together ‘half-way house’ applications so they can tick the compliance box. Some have even resorted to Excel for a quick

I thought this article by the UNSW Business School put forward a well-balanced argument for and against the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ push for changes to corporations law to afford directors broader protection (see AICD article here). 

In essence the argument goes that if directors feel too much at risk of personal liability they either won’t act as a director or they will be risk averse in their decision making.  Being too risk averse is bad for the economy and bad for sharehol

In the second of a four-part series, Markus Sander tests the latest payments innovations. Last week Markus shared his experience using mobile application payments. This week: crypto currencies - from Ripples to rupees.

Two US credit institutions recently announced its willingness to integrate a virtual currency network into its cross-border remittances business. This move comes a few months after the first German bank made their plan public to integrate the same network. Called Ripple, it is an i

How can the 33rd largest company in America compromise the personal data of 56 million customers? And how can a company that spent $1 billion dollars to “digitize” itself take nine months to identify a breach? Most importantly, how can a company once cited for leadership and success in risk management fail to…well, manage risk?

Cyber-crime expert Brian Krebs asks “Are we spending most of our money on trying to keep the bad guys out or trying to detect as soon as possible when the bad guys get in?

Everyone’s talking about the brave new world of payments. The mainstream press and even my family seem to know about everything from mobile and peer-to-peer payments to crypto-currencies.

I was researching about decision-making (again) recently and I came across this article by the late Dr Russell Ackoff, a “Systems Thinker”, called “Why few organisations adopt systems thinking”.

In the article Dr Ackoff writes about how organisations are naturally resistant to change and opines on our tendency to find a scapegoat when things go wrong from something we have done, although we seldom need to find a scapegoat for something we did not do.

Ackoff says: “The deterioration and failu

I was planning from a long time to provide you with some initial information regarding intellectual property protection in Bulgaria. Well, finally the time to do this has come.

Lets first answer to a question – What actually is Intellectual Property? (for these that don’t know).

An objects of intellectual property rights are intangible assets with economic value, expressed in a manner and an objective form, set out in a legal rule, which primarily are the result of creative activity.

In national, i

Home Depot hacked. http://t.co/qZROzHKWr2. This #risk preventable with #ERMSoftware. So why are ERM Programs failing? http://t.co/gcbLO6wCjz

-- Steven Minsky (@SteveMinsky) September 2, 2014

The goal of an ERM program is to put your organization in the best position to manage uncertainty, and to provide transparency into areas of vulnerability so businesses can make better decisions. Risk Management Software supports that process by providing insights and analytics that aren't obvious to the front

RMB (renminbi) is poised to broaden its reach and influence as a true global currency. China is establishing its first official Europe-based renminbi clearing bank in London, after a recent visit of the Chinese Premier to the UK. A number of other new locations are set to follow suit. What does this expansion mean for global transaction banks?

Hong Kong and Singapore are the busiest financial centres able to trade, convert or settle in RMB. By adding London to the official PBOC (People’s Bank of

In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink,” he examines a hospital whose team had learned that to diagnose heart attacks, it’s more beneficial to gather a few key indicators than to try and take every measure into account. I’ve found that to judge the health of ERM programs, there are also a subset of characteristics that seem to immediately indicate success.

1. Does the ERM program engage the front lines?
2. Can the program analyze information across silos?
3. Has the program engaged, or integrated, with at least one o

In its April 2014 review of RDR implementation, the FCA highlighted its aims to make the market more competitive in favour of consumers. What steps should execution-only brokers take to address those aims, before regulation is imposed, to get ahead of competition and gain customer loyalty and trust?

The review - ‘Supervising retail investment firms: being clear about adviser charges and services’, TR 14/6 – focused on helping customers make informed choices and ensure that advice is provided base

Why the cloud? At first glance the advantages to financial institutions are clear: lower costs, faster reactions to competitors and regulators, and improved communication with counterparties, for seamless transaction execution.

Even though the financial services industry has been slow to embrace cloud (mainly due to security concerns), adoption is accelerating. The numbers speak for themselves. Global business spending for infrastructure and services related to the cloud was $78.2bn in 2011. This

As a Trusted Advisor in Risk do you focus on all the decisions the business is making or do you focus on the big issues?  

I bet you thought to yourself, of course I focus on the big issues, they are the ones that count.

Now, what if I asked you, “as a Trusted Advisor in Risk, do you VALUE all of the decisions the business is making or do you only focus on the big issues?”  Now you are saying to yourself, “of course I value all of the decisions and I value the bigger ones more than the smaller one

Risk data is an area that has been largely overlooked for many years. Today the situation is different and the area is facing increasing regulatory scrutiny, as Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs) rush to comply with the Basel 239 Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation and Risk Reporting. An enterprise’s success depends on its ability to analyze risk data efficiently and effectively, in ways that uncover both risks and opportunities. Being able to extract and escalate c

Starting January 1, 2015, insurers across the United States are subject to a National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) model law requiring them to annually submit an Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA). ORSA is a self-assessment of sorts, requiring large and medium-size insurance groups* to report on their current and future risk management process.

ORSA Model Act outlines a few basic dimensions on which insurers will be analyzed. They include (1) effectiveness of risk management

Reputational Risk Draws Increased Board Awareness, But Not Action 

In its fifth annual board of directors survey, "Concerns About Risks

Confronting Boards," EisnerAmper surveyed directors serving on the boards of more than 250 publicly traded, private, not-for-profit, and private equity-owned companies to find out what is being discussed in American boardrooms and, in turn, what those boards are accomplishing as a result.

“The financial cost and damage to reputation from a cyber/privacy breac