Facing low interest rates, deleveraging, recurring scandals and increasing capital requirements, banks have struggled in recent years. The prospects for many of them are no better going forward. Where once, a score of institutions aspired to be globe spanning, universal banks, the ambitions of many would-be financial titans, have been tempered by crisis and overreach.This doesn’t mean that there haven’t been winners as well as losers. The very largest banks have generally increased their market shares as some when bankrupt and other second tier competitors have struggled to stay afloat in the...

Something is very wrong in Europe; unemployment floats near all time highs in the history of the single currency and the euro zone’s economic growth remains meagre at best. This would appear to be grounds for dynamic action on the part of both governments and the European Central Bank but such endeavours have been slow in coming. On the fiscal front, governments in southern Europe are constrained by their already high borrowing costs and the push for austerity limits the extent to which demand can be stimulated directly by public sector spending. This makes monetary policy more vital than...

The insurance industry has not suffered the same reputation-damaging scandals as the banking industry, however, for some consumers, as insurers are financial institutions they have been tarred with the same brush – and need to prove their worth. In a recent survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, insurers agreed that they have a duty to contribute positively to society. However some quite bravely admitted that they are not meeting their societal responsibilities. What’s getting in their way?Regulation looks like the main culprit. Over half of survey respondents believe that...

I wish I had a pound for every time I heard “mobile” at the recent Economist European Retail Banking Summit. After watching how mobile payments system M-Pesa transformed banking in Kenya, developed-world retail bankers have had their eyes opened and now see mobile banking as the next game-changer in their industry. It’s easy to see why they are excited about mobile. There are over 6.2 billion mobiles– as Candido Leonelli, managing director at Brazil-based Banco Bradesco, said at the Summit, there are more mobiles than toothbrushes in the world. The M-Pesa example shows the appetite for mobile...