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Wednesday
- July 19, 2000
Putting Trust Online
According to BBC News:
"Online shopping looks
set to become a less risky venture with the launch of a
scheme to hallmark good web traders.
On Tuesday the Government backed
TrustUK scheme was unveiled that will police online commerce
on behalf of the UK's growing numbers of interet shoppers.
The scheme is looking to recruit
trade organisations who will enrol their members into the
scheme and ensure they are adhering to high standards of
service..."
Click
here for the full story .
European Financial Institutions
Not Ready for Threat from Portals
A new Report from Forrester Research B.V. analyzes how
Europe's financial establishment is trailing behind rapidly
growing upstarts in giving customers choice and advice. The
established firms must therefore reorganize, separate distribution
from manufacturing, and create partnerships with the newcomers
in order to survive.
"Most of the financial
institutions we interviewed are venturing into selling
some third-party products," explained Brian Gross,
analyst for Forrester Research B.V.; "but these attempts
are halfhearted. They don't give consumers a choice of
suppliers when that threatens their proprietary products.
And the firms don't see the threat that the upstart financial
portals pose by giving consumers that choice."
Forrester defines "Open
Finance" as the new financial services environment
created by the Net, where emerging affluent consumers enjoy
best-of-breed financial services combined with the easy
electronic movement of money.
For the Report "Open Finance
Storms Europe," Forrester interviewed executives from
40 banks, fund houses, insurance companies, and brokerage
firms across Western Europe to determine if and when they
will adopt the new market dynamics. Seventy-five percent
of interviewees offer, or plan to offer, some third-party
products within the next 12 months. Forty-six percent of
respondents told Forrester that this is driven by customer
demand for greater choice and better products. The executives
believe that Open Finance will take hold by 2003 and that
large established financial institutions will dominate
the market.
But Forrester asserts that the
incumbents' Open Finance efforts are meager. "While
established institutions overestimate their attempts at
Open Finance, they equally underestimate newcomers' threats.
A flurry of pure-play online firms and financial portals
is bringing Open Finance to Europe. European consumers
want more, and upstarts are giving them more choices, greater
control, and soon, better advice to manage their finances," explained
Gross.
Today's Web gives but a glimpse
into how new players and new technologies are moving in
quickly to meet the growing demands of customers. By year-end,
Forrester expects more innovation: Open Finance offered
through dozens of Pan-European financial portals like the
localized sites of GlobalNetFinancial that participate
in a complex Web of relationships we call financial eBusiness
networks. Forrester believes incumbents must clearly choose
and separate roles they will play in financial eBusiness
networks: Attracter, Transformer, or Match Maker.
Attracters focus on distribution,
Transformers seek product excellence and distribute through
others, and Match Makers help handle the complexity of
the number of relationships. A handful of incumbents will
win as Attracters, but suprisingly a number of upstarts
with Pan-European scale, vision, and partnership skills
do so as well. Top click-and-mortar players will be able
to play the roles of Attracter and Transformer, but they
must reorganize and separate the business units playing
each role so that each can freely link up with best-of-breed
partners in financial eBusiness networks.
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