The Future of Retail Banking in Europe

A View from the Top

Wiley, 2002

15 min read

10 take-aways

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What's inside?

While the euro has made European banking more transparent, everything else about its future has gotten murkier.

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Recommendation

The good news is that this tome provides tremendous detail about its subject matter, retail banking in Europe. The bad news is that you have to really want to know a lot about this specific subject to penetrate its lack of organization and awkward writing style. The information is abundant, particularly about the past, although the book doesn’t include insight about the future. European banking is full of threats, opportunities, reversals and challenges. It is subject to revolutionary reshaping by major political and economic events. Popular books don’t tend to get written about such esoteric subjects unless they are post-mortems on disasters. Given that, getAbstract.com thinks this academic if thorough entry may be indispensable to people with a real need to know about the subject.

Summary

Changes in European Banking

Factors driving change in European banking include The European Directives on Banking Supervision, the Basel Accord and the progress of integration of the European Union (EU). Technology, the Eurodollar and industry consolidation are opening new opportunities as they close old ones, reshaping the industry and restructuring its environment. Knowing how the European banking world will look when these forces have played out is not possible yet.

Banks and New Forms of Money

Banks have traditionally taken deposits, loaned them out and facilitated payments. Many central bankers believe that deposit, credit and payments functions are their banks’ critical attributes, the activities so important to the economy that they must be supervised. But the evolution of "electronic money" may result in a payment system without banks, where customers can make or receive payments directly via wireless connections or even television, without an intermediary. With or without banks, the payment system must provide acceptable forms of payment by check, credit card, debit card or some other instrument; provide an audit trail and guarantee the legality, safety...

About the Authors

Oonagh McDonald and Kevin Keasey are leading authorities in the field of European banking. McDonald is also the author of The Future of Whitehall, Parliament at Work, Own Your Own: Social Ownership Examined (The Fabian Series) and Swedish Models: The Swedish Model of Central Government. Keasey is also the author of Corporate Governance: Economic and Financial Issues, Repeated Financial Decisions: An Experimental Analysis, Repeated Financial Decisions: An Experimental Analysis, The Intelligent Guide to Stock Market Investment, Small Firm Management: Ownership, Finance, and Performance and Fortune’s Wheel: Uncovering the Wealth of Ages.

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M. d. 7 years ago

15 years later the hype is still ongoing, with many disrupters, but the big change has still not happened. What has come true is the margin erosion. From that perspective it's a fun dive into the past to read this book.

Oonagh McDonald and Kevin Keasey