Banking Stratosphere Sees Another One Bite The Dust at Barclays

Bank Technology Innovation : Shape Up or Ship Out!

What happened?

Hot on the heels of the news of the firing of Deutsche Bank’s Co Chairmen Anshu Jain and Jurgen Fitschen, as revealed in the previous blog, comes the news that Barclays Bank Chairman John McFarlane has ousted its chief executive Antony Jenkins in a similar move. According to John McFarlane, it appears that Antony Jenkins had become a liability; hence it was expedient to jettison Mr Jenkins to look towards the future at Barclays.

Barclays CEO firedWithin the environs of the bank and specifically it’s board of directors, Barclays was being seen as becoming all talk and no action. The pace had become slow, efficiency was dipping and profits were declining. In 2012, Antony Jenkins had replaced Bob Diamond who had resigned due to the Libor scandal. In May this year, Barclays had agreed to pay $2.4 billion in fines for trying to manipulate foreign exchange markets.

Why its happening?

Barclays is not the only bank to change it’s CEO this year: Deutsche Bank AG, Standard Chartered PLC, Credit Suisse Group AG have all fired their chief executives in an attempt to inject new blood and formulate strategies to deal with a difficult regulatory environment, the losses incurring from the banking downturn and financial irregularities.

Keeping pace with tougher regulatory curbs will be a challenge for all the banks, not just Barclays. After failing the annual stress tests in 2014 and 2015, this week Santander Holdings USA, the US arm of the Spanish bank Banco Santander S.A, was in trouble with the US Federal Reserve again. The Fed threw the book at Santander last Tuesday, ordering it to improve capital planning and liquidity risk management. Santander has not been slapped with any fine yet, but it has been placed on probation of two months during which it has to submit written plans for restructuring of problem areas identified by the Fed.

There is a clearly evident pattern to these events. In today’s changed banking environment, the need of the hour is for new technology which can arrest the slide of banks, alleviate their regulatory problems and fines and allow chief executives to carry out their vision without impediments.

What Next?

New technology like big data would enable banks to become less cumbersome and top heavy and allow for efficiency and speed to execute their strategy. Challenging times require innovative technologies and a pro active approach as offered by Hexanika.

Watch this space.

Authors: Maheen Usmani (https://ke.linkedin.com/pub/maheen-usmani/ba/a9a/152) & Yogesh Pandit (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yogpandit)

Photo Credit: v4bob4v via Flickr

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