Miliband promises two challenger banks amid major branch sell off

[bobspud]

We are heading for fewer banks not more though…

Look at the market trends for Mobile payments and Wallet applications. Money changed to plastic cards and now the race is on to turn plastic into a mobile app leaving banks that used to have to exist on a high street in order to store money rapidly becoming software houses plugged into PayPal, Voca or Visa.

The days of high street banks being there for market traders to take money to, and punters to take money from are fading.

I don't think I have had more than a £20 kicking around the house for months. Everything I want gets processed through Visa by the end of the year it will probably be a chip on my phone…

[MicrosoftBob]

He's going to fix the price of energy that's bought and sold on world markets too apparently. And he's going to rescue the middle class. I think he needs a suity suit.

ftfy

[MicrosoftBob]

Indeed, but surely it was the investment activities of all the banks that caused the problems. What goes on in High Street banks was largely irrelevant to the crisis, and in these internet enabled days High Street banks are a little irrelevant anyway.

When it comes to "too big to fail" we should be a lot more concerned about the supermarkets.

It didn't help allowing building societies to become banks

[bobspud]

More competition will lead to more product innovation which can only be a good thing. A prime example is mortgages for the self employed which many of the current banks still struggle to get their head around.

Product innovation: What like Credit Default Swaps or mortgage risk bundles?
I think I would rather have Morgan Stanley or City bank fronting that sort of stupidity rather than some little MomandPopbanken.com

[newcastle]

Promises Promises Promises

What a politician says in an election and does in office are two very different things. Cameron may be a fool, but he's in power and as such he's constrained by the reality that is the real world. Miliband however can say what ever he wants without the threat of being held to account and some fools will just soak it up.

[Martin@AS Financial]

Product innovation: What like Credit Default Swaps or mortgage risk bundles?
I think I would rather have Morgan Stanley or City bank fronting that sort of stupidity rather than some little MomandPopbanken.com

Not at all Bobspud.

The example I was using for the self employed is because many banks when assessing the self employed for a mortgage work off an average of the last 3 years net profits (Sole Trader) or Salary and dividend (Ltd Co). However, if you are a PAYE employee, and have just started a job, most lenders are happy to work off the one payslip even if it is your first job and have no experience. By no means am I in support for a return to adverse lending, self cert ect but there are still too many good quality self employed clients being turned away by banks when trying to raise a mortgage.

[MicrosoftBob]

What a politician says in an election and does in office are two very different things. Cameron may be a fool, but he's in power and as such he's constrained by the reality that is the real world. Miliband however can say what ever he wants without the threat of being held to account and some fools will just soak it up.

A bit like the Liberal Democrats then

[barrydidit]

More competition will lead to more product innovation which can only be a good thing. A prime example is mortgages for the self employed which many of the current banks still struggle to get their head around.

Provided the underlying platform can support this. The issue with carving out a bit of bank A and calling it bank B is that you'll end up with bank B running bank A's systems over bank A's infrastructure for the next 10 years (or whatever the TSA is).

So yeah, in theory bank B can launch as many contractor mortgages as it likes. In practice it depends on the ability of bank A's infrastructure to deliver that product.

[MyUserName]

I heard that on the news this morning and thought 'GREAT, lots of money to be made contracting on those FUBAR projects!'

Exactly what I thought!

Although they probably would not be so FUBAR if I did not get on them but I don't care as long as I make a load of money.

[barrydidit]

Exactly what I thought!

Although they probably would not be so FUBAR if I did not get on them but I don't care as long as I make a load of money.

There is that aspect to be considered as well though