The Price of Everything

Zopa is a shot across the bow of traditional banking, much like Commerce Bank.  The effects will take years to play out, but the best banks will take the opportunity to hone their competitive edge right now.

Zopa is a classic blue ocean strategy.  It will likely create brand new customers in areas like personal loans rather than pull them from banks.  But zopa may also hit banks in their sweet spot of low-cost deposits.

Banks should not compete directly against zopa on price.  Banks have a different cost structure - and a different product.  But they should think about lessons from zopa - as well as areas where traditional banks can excel. Read more »

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We saw in part one that peer-to-peer banking has a lot going for it.  But there are some strong negatives too. Read more »

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A few months ago, a venture capitalist asked my opinion about Zopa.com - a new financial startup. I told them I thought they were not much of a threat to banks. The VC went on to fund the company, which goes to show how little I know. Read more »

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“Wiki”. Even the word is silly.

Say wiki out loud among responsible adults and get the same look you’d expect if you brought up your Dungeons & Dragons fairy character with strength = 10. Over Scotch at the Algonquin.

Last time, I quickly covered by bringing up wikipedia (amazing encyclopedia built with a wiki). My companions were relieved that I was not speaking complete gibberish. We hurriedly changed topics before they risked hearing about my comic book collection.

But wikis really are that important to banks, software companies - virtually any organization that has access to computers. While wikipedia is amazing, it has very little to do with the true power of a wiki in a company. Read more »

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