Optima Consultancy

I'm hosting Findings from the 10th German Mobile Banking App Review, with Visa. Make sure to attend it tomorrow. linkedin.com/events/finding…

Growing pains? Has Starling Bank matured to now face the 'incumbent problem' of process and control within change? Another slap on the wrists, this time by the CMA for breaches of the Retail Banking Order and Directions issued due to the materiality of the breach ..buff.ly/lHBgF43

🎉 The 9th edition of our German Mobile Banking App Review 2025, in partnership with Visa, is out now 🎉 including customer sentiment analysis from DataEQ. 📥 Download from buff.ly/Ix32iiN ➡️Sign-up to a webinar on 27th May 2025 ⏰ 15:30 CET where we discuss the key findings bit.ly/3ES59Yz

Lots to get into and unpack, but impressive results from Revolut for FY24 as it bursts through £1bn profit buff.ly/jX7ZCvF

Interesting proposal to raise the FSCS from £85k to £110k - this was the benchmark level that PSR aligned with for the APP scam reimbursement level when moving down from the £400k-odd FOS level. Will they now realign with £110k? buff.ly/bomp5cP

Big news! I’ll be speaking at Pay360 on the Innovation Stage, hosted by Fintech Fringe, as part of Europe’s largest payments event, welcoming 6,000+ fintech and payments professionals. I’ll be on a light-hearted end-of-day panel (think Graham Norton meets fintech), reflecting on the day's highlights, sharing insights on what’s next for payments innovation and how fintechs can scale smarter in today’s competitive landscape. 👇 SUPER DUPER DISCOUNT ALERT 👇 For 30% off your ticket, use PAY360FF at checkout. Register now: buff.ly/3wHtADn #Fintech #ScalingFintech #PaymentsInnovation #Pay360 #ThePaymentsAssociation #FintechFringe

I'm a big fan of the Neobanks like Monzo who have led the way with so much innovation in the banking sector and pushed the incumbents to follow suit. Looking forward to seeing this 'undo payment' feature when it lands. Much like the 'undo send email', could this be another way of tackling misdirected payments/errors with amounts or references or is it to help address APP scams? Intrigued to see the positioning. Unlike some other features, I suspect this is one that incumbents' tech stacks will not allow them to copy...

Ouch! Not what you want if you're HSBC when you have a couple of weeks to draft your reply to the Treasury Select Committee about resilience as a result of the Barclays outage and your own services go down! buff.ly/4bcqish

Treasury Select Committee writes to CMA9 and specifically to Barclays about the recent outage and operational resilience. Will be interesting to see the responses on this but also made me ponder how the CMA9 list is so outdated now given the state of the UK market some 10 years after the designation of the 9! buff.ly/3Ey0BWM

The race to not be the last branch in town heats up as Lloyds shutters another 136 - "driven by changes in customer behaviour. Transactions in the 136 branches it planned to close were down 48 per cent over the past five years". buff.ly/4hdVtFG

Another 53 branches to be closed by NatWest . Always a stark reminder in the consultation stats on each branch about the tidal wave of consumer change and the pressure this brings to the branch costs. I have spoken on many occasions about how a central/utility shared branch model is surely the only long-term outcome faced with these trends? How long can Nationwide (and HSBC) keep their no closure promises? buff.ly/3WVp3I3

A few weeks ago I received a printed set of T&Cs from Starling for the first time ever which made think it was a very traditional, bank-like approach I hadn't seen before. Another hire now coming in from an incumbent. Is there a risk that the challenger mentality is getting diluted with these hires? buff.ly/3CmzzRj

Interesting detail under the headlines here on Nationwide ATMs. 16% increase in withdrawals from non-customers vs. 4% for customers - reflecting branch closures by competitors. At the current ATM interchange levels, will this make Nationwide ATMs a burden for the business or a 'cash cow'!? buff.ly/4goSfOx

Rumours of a Santander exit from the UK in the press over the weekend. Is this a sign that the challenger banks have made conditions too tough for some in the market? buff.ly/3WrUrxg

FT reporting on rumours that LBG could close about a quarter of their branches by allowing customers of all their brands to use any branch. Internal documents showed that that 25% are in close proximity to each other. buff.ly/4fS04M4

Our latest report shows great progress on app speed : ➡️ Average log-in time is 5.1 seconds ➡️ There is a difference of 6 seconds between the fastest app and the slowest ➡️ Fintechs take an average of 4.5 seconds to log-in compared to 5.5 seconds for traditional providers

Last week we released our 8th report in partnership with Visa. ➡️ Fintechs released an average of 52 updates in 2024 ➡️ Traditional providers released an average of 13 updates in the same year ➡️Challengers are releasing 4 x more updates than traditional providers

Our German Mobile Banking App Review 2024, in partnership with Visa, is out now and available to download for free from our website. Join us for a webinar tomorrow on 5th November 2024, 14.30 GMT to discuss the latest report. ➡ Sign up here: buff.ly/4htgeO0

Interesting consultation out from HMT about whether rules are needed to govern the acceptance of physical cash in the UK . A few countries around the world are looking at this type of issue..buff.ly/48zrIeN

Our 8th edition of the German Mobile Banking App Review, in partnership with Visa is out next week. Join us for a webinar on 5th November 2024, 15.30 GMT to discuss the latest findings across fintech and traditional banks. ➡ Sign up here: buff.ly/4htgeO0