Beyond Sandler: Risk tolerance and the UK investment deficit

The Sandler report of 2002 found a £27bn shortfall in the UK nation's savings. The report highlights the industry changes necessary for citizens to increase investment for their future and thus reduce this deficit. The mass of this investment activity will take place through high street financial services organisations. Sandler suggests changes in industry-wide structure and practice which will lead to macro changes in generic consumer behaviour. This paper suggests that the marketing departments in financial services organisations can go beyond this and harness ‘risk tolerance’ as a segmentation variable to alter behaviour on a more targeted, micro level. It is suggested that this practice could have an even more profound effect than that envisaged by Sandler. In support of this postulate, this paper presents the results of a research programme into segmentation by risk tolerance within a UK retail financial services organisation.     

Practice papers: The evolution of segmentation methods in financial services: Where next?

Over the last few years, the financial services market has seen a proliferation of new players and new channels. Customers have increased expectations of being offered the right products, at the right time and for the right reasons. Demographics and affluence have always been the backbone of segmentation tools, but is this still sufficient to meet the challenges that today's marketers face? This paper is a review of how customer segmentation has evolved within the financial services market and the corresponding demand for consumer information. It assesses whether today's segmentation tools remain sufficiently innovative to provide marketers with the information they require in order to maintain competitive advantage in a highly competitive marketplace.     

Cutting costs in your own backyard: opportunities in financial services

Hospitals looking to reduce cost and improve performance in financial services should focus on these areas: Treasury banking services costs and fees. The possibility of a revenue-generating vendor payment solution. The accounts payable process.     

Electronic commerce and the marketing of Internet banking in the UK

Recent market research findings and financial services consultants' reports have signalled that electronic commerce will play an increasingly important role in consumers' future financial lives. This paper discusses such evidence and seeks to contextualise the debate on the future of banking through a discussion of consumers' financial behaviour, the UK Government's position and an analysis of UK financial providers' current marketing of Internet banking services to consumers.     

Do customer profiles change over time? An investigation of the success of targeting consumers of Australia’s top 10 banks – 2009 and 2011

Segmentation and targeting are cited as being a core part of marketing strategy for any organisation. This study examines whether the top 10 Australian banks have successfully managed to segment the market and target consumers with different profiles. In doing so, it compares the profiles of those banks over 2 years, 2009 and 2011, noting any changes between the years. A sample of 52?000 Australian households, from each of the 2 years, from the Roy Morgan Single Source Survey was utilised to profile users of Australia’s top 10 banks by market share. The results suggest that there has been little difference in profiles of consumers across most Australian banks. The results challenge whether financial service companies are successfully segmenting the marketplace and asks whether the Australian financial services market is simply a mass market.     

金融服务进村入社区工程实施情况调研报告——以南京地区为例

我国农村金融发展相对滞后,成为金融体系中最薄弱的环节。农村金融市场是一个不完全竞争市场,逆向选择和道德风险问题严重。构建完善的农村金融体系,有必要采取政府适当介入的方式来改善农村金融市场存在的缺陷、弥补市场的失灵。加大对农村金融政策的扶持力度,加强金融服务意识,结合农村实际情况改善推广、宣传方式,创新涉农金融服务产品。     

Integrating intelligent systems into marketing to support market segmentation decisions

For the last 50 years market segmentation has been considered to be a key concept in marketing strategy. As a means of tackling market heterogeneity, the underlying logic and managerial rationale for market segmentation is well established in the marketing literature. However, there is evidence to suggest that attempts by organizations to classify customers into distinct segments for whom product or services can be specifically tailored are proving to be difficult to implement in practice. As the business environment in which many organizations operate becomes increasingly uncertain and highly competitive, greater importance is now being attached to marketing knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to highlight market segmentation problems as a relevant area for a greater level of engagement of intelligent systems academic researchers and practitioners with their counterparts within the marketing discipline, in order to explore how data mining approaches can assist marketers in gaining valuable insights into patterns of consumer behaviour, which can then be used to inform market segmentation decision‐making. Since the application of data mining within the marketing domain is only in its infancy, a research agenda is proposed to encourage greater interdisciplinary collaboration between information systems and marketing so that data mining can more noticeably enter the repertoire of analytical techniques being employed for segmentation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What do we know about the second moment of financial markets?

Recent research shows that the vast majority of scientific studies published in leading finance journals fails scientific replication (Hou, Xue, and Zhang, 2020; Harvey, Liu, and Zhu; 2016). This study argues that p-hacking, publication pressure and the selection bias from leading finance journals are perhaps not the underlying root cause for this issue. This study shows that standard methodologies often used in finance research are inevitably sample-specific due to the very nature of financial markets. While the consensus of earlier research postulates a rejection of the time-honored Levy hypothesis, the results of this study strongly indicate that the variance of variance does not exist in any of the financial key markets that are considered. An unexpected finding of this study is that the variance process governing the U.S. dollar foreign exchange rate market is generating more extreme events than the Bitcoin market. The results cast doubts on the validity of methodologies currently used in finance research.     

Satisfaction drivers for Internet service technology among stock brokerage customers in Thailand

Many financial services firms are offering the Internet as a self-service technology (SST), for online stock trading, in an effort to increase effciency and give customers greater access. It is important to understand how this technology will influence customer satisfaction. This paper reports results of exploratory research to identify sources of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the service encounter in Thai stockbrokerage firms. Results show that customers and service providers determine sources of customer dis/satisfaction differently, depending on whether the service encounter is technology-based or interpersonal. Different customer profiles give rise to segmentation in response to the use of Internet technology in this industry.     

Vendor Financing

This paper shows that, even in the presence of a perfectly competitive banking industry, it is optimal for firms with market power to engage in vendor financing if credit customers have lower reservation prices than cash customers or if adverse selection makes it infeasible to write credit contracts that separate customers according to their credit risk. We analyze how the advantage of vendor financing depends on the relative size of the cash and credit markets, the heterogeneity of credit customers, and the number of firms in the industry.     

The end stage of a financial service product

This paper considers product elimination in the financial services sector. Specifically it identifies the factors that cause an organisation to question the viability of a product — a key element of effective end-stage product management. A questionnaire was mailed to 196 individuals with experience of product elimination in retail banks, building societies and retail insurance organisations. Fifty-six usable questionnaires were returned. It was found that there were 32 key drivers of product elimination. These were grouped into eight interrelated areas: product led; strategic led; customer led; cost led; information technology led; operational led; personnel led; and externally led. It was also found that there were three functional conditions characterising the nature of the drivers: an elimination driver seldom appears without warning; the organisation generates the majority of reasons for product removal; the causes of elimination tend to reflect the overall operating context of the business. It is concluded that focusing on past elimination may not be helpful in predicting future requirements. Effective product elimination requires that organisations are able to identify drivers and be willing to act upon them. Many drivers are within the organisations' control and it is often the action (or inaction) of the organisation that creates the need for elimination.     

The Asian financial crisis: The role of derivative securities trading and foreign investors in Korea

This paper is part of a larger research program pertaining to the role of derivatives during financial crisis and also part of the research pertaining to the causes of the Asian financial crisis. The Korean market is studied because of two reasons: (1) it is an important example of the Asian financial meltdown and (2) there is a detailed data set available of all transactions by different types of protagonists, including foreign investors. The results in this paper indicate that futures markets and trading by foreign investors played a key role during the Korean stock market turbulence in 1997.     

The consolidation of the financial services industry: Causes,consequences, and implications for the future

This article designs a framework for evaluating the causes, consequences, and future implications of financial services industry consolidation, reviews the extant research literature within the context of this framework (over 250 references), and suggests fruitful avenues for future research. The evidence is consistent with increases in market power from some types of consolidation; improvements in profit efficiency and diversification of risks, but little or no cost efficiency improvement on average; relatively little effect on the availability of services to small customers; potential improvements in payments system efficiency; and potential costs on the financial system from increases in systemic risk or expansion of the financial safety net.     

在岸人民币市场与香港离岸人民币市场联动关系的实证研究

作为国际金融中心,香港为内地的发展提供了举足轻重的金融服务。近年来,我国政府力推人民币国际化,具有完备金融市场的香港成为构建离岸人民币中心、促进人民币国际化进程的排头兵。香港已经建成了规模庞大的离岸人民币市场,这一市场的波动和走势对在岸人民币市场的干扰和影响不可轻视,关乎在岸人民币市场的稳定和国家金融安全。文章分析了在岸人民币市场即期汇率、远期汇率与香港离岸人民币市场即期汇率、远期汇率之间的关系,发现两两之间并不总是存在引导关系。     

Our Retirement in Their Hands: A User Perspective

This paper reports on a survey of Australian retirees' attitudes to financial planning advice before, at or after retirement. The results demonstrate that, despite government initiatives aimed at enhancing consumer confidence in the financial services market, most retirees feel dissatisfied with, and lack confidence in, the services provided by their financial advisers. This suggests an increased role for financial planners in providing not only the additional information required under government policy, but also information that is understandable and useful to retirees.     

Financial service call centres: Problems encountered by the grey market

Technological advances have resulted in financial service companies being able to make use of alternative channels such as call centres and the Internet to deliver their services to their customers. At the same time, there has been a major growth throughout Europe in the grey market consisting of people who grew up in an age of face-to-face contact with service suppliers. This paper reports on a programme of qualitative research looking at the grey market's perceptions of the call centre delivery channel. It discusses the difficulties encountered by this market and the negative views that are held. It also highlights the need for further research into this area if financial service organisations are going to address the issues raised and effectively satisfy the needs of this growing market segment.     

中国金融形势的动态特征与演变机理分析:1996-2016

本文分析了1996-2016年中国金融形势的变化趋势及影响金融形势的主导变量的动态特征,探究不同金融市场发展状况对中国金融整体形势及金融风险的影响力变迁。我们首次运用动态模型选择的时变因子增广向量自回归模型(DMS-TVP-FAVAR)测算了中国月度金融形势指数,考察了货币政策、外汇市场和资本流动、货币市场、银行业、股票市场、债券市场、非传统金融市场和国外金融市场对中国金融形势的差别化影响。研究发现,样本期内货币供应量一直是影响中国金融形势最主要的因素,非传统金融市场、外汇市场的影响程度日益加深;在国际金融危机期间,国外金融市场对中国金融形势表现出主导性的影响。总的来看,对中国金融形势的动态特征与演变机理分析有助于及时识别潜在金融风险。     

The stakes in the over 50s market for financial institutions in France

A lot of research has examined the mature market, defined here as people aged 50 or over. One field of research remains little studied in France, however: the behaviour of senior citizens in the field of financial services. This paper indicates the demographic and economic potential represented by French over 50s. It also examines the way they manage their money and the special way in which these consumers deal with financial products. Finally, the paper considers what offers in the field of insurance and banking are made to this age group in France.