Reuters/23 October 2017
(Reuters) – Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) will start using an additional layer of authentication for its online banking services, the Wall Street bank said on Monday, amid a wave of high-profile data breaches at several big U.S. companies.
BofA said it would incorporate Intel Corp’s (INTC.O) Online Connect technology, that enables fingerprint touch payments, into its online banking systems starting next year. (bit.ly/2yGydeQ)
Cybersecurity is getting serious attention from U.S. companies, as concerns rise among financial market participants and regulators about the risks posed by cyber attacks.
The financial services industry is among the most vulnerable to cyber crime because of the massive amount of money and valuable data that banks, brokerages and investment firms process each day.
Just last month, credit monitoring firm Equifax Inc (EFX.N) disclosed that cyber criminals had breached its systems between mid-May and late-July and stolen the sensitive information of millions of Americans.
BofA itself has earmarked about $600 million this year toward information security, its chief operations and technology officer Cathy Bessant told CNBC earlier this month.
The bank would spend a similar amount for information security next year, and has some 1,200 employees “dedicated to that effort,” Bessant added.
BofA also said on Monday that customers with an iPhone X, Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) newest smartphone that will hit stores next month, can use the phone’s Face ID technology for secure authentication into BofA’s mobile app.
News Source: Reuters
Read MoreThe New York Times/22 October 2017
ETHLEHEM, Pa. — Ellen Gaugler remembers driving her father to the Bethlehem Steel mill, where he spent his working years hauling beams off the assembly line and onto rail cars.
When the Pennsylvania plant shut down about two decades ago, Ms. Gaugler thought it was the last time she or anyone in Bethlehem would come to its gates to find a job that paid a decent wage for a physical day of work.
But she saw an ad in the paper last year for a position at a local warehouse that changed her mind. She’d never heard of Zulily, the online retailer doing the hiring, but she knew the address: It was on the old mill site, steps from where her father worked.
“When I came for the interviews I looked up and said, ‘Oh, my God, I feel like I am at home,’” Ms. Gaugler said. She got the job.
As shopping has shifted from conventional stores to online marketplaces, many retail workers have been left in the cold, but Ms. Gaugler is coming out ahead. Sellers like Zulily, Amazon and Walmart are competing to get goods to the buyer’s doorstep as quickly as possible, giving rise to a constellation of vast warehouses that have fueled a boom for workers without college degrees and breathed new life into pockets of the country that had fallen economically behind.
Warehouses have produced hundreds of thousands of jobs since the recovery began in 2010, adding workers at four times the rate of overall job growth. A significant chunk of that growth has occurred outside large metropolitan areas, in counties that had relatively little of the picking-and-packing work until recently.
“We are at the very beginning of a rather large transformation, and the humble warehouse is the leading edge of this,” said Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington. “These fulfillment center jobs are not being created in the tech hubs that were growing before. We’ve broadened the winner’s circle.”
Americans have grown more comfortable ordering everything on the internet, including bulky wares like canoes and refrigerators. Warehouses, as a result, have become gargantuan, doubling in size since 2010, according to CBRE, a real estate services firm.
And while robots have started to intervene in the process, it still takes a lot of bodies to move hundreds of thousands of boxes in and out of these buildings every day. Warehouses serving the largest e-commerce sites typically employ upwards of 2,000 people.
The hubs of this network are far-flung. In Bullitt County, Ky., south of Louisville, warehouse employment surged to 6,000 in 2017 from 1,200 in 2010, according to the Labor Department. In Kenosha, Wis., once a manufacturing hub whose auto plants turned out Nash Ramblers and Plymouth Horizons, warehouse jobs grew to 6,200 from 250 in the same period.
Those places have the advantage of being surrounded by highways and rail lines that lead to some of the nation’s largest cities. They also have an abundance of cheap land and labor, two assets that have become increasingly vital to companies selling online.
The same calculus has made a warehouse mecca out of the land that houses the carcass of Bethlehem Steel, giving natives like Ms. Gaugler a sense that their hometown may be thriving.
Ms. Gaugler, 54, earns $13.50 an hour putting together shipments at the Zulily warehouse, where employees tend to refer to their end customer as “Mom.” She works 10-hour shifts from Wednesday through Saturday, and puts in for overtime whenever she can.
“I like to get those orders out to Mom,” she said. The work is physically demanding, she said, but it’s straightforward. She gets a list of items to pull from shelves every morning — toys, glassware, baby clothes — and works her way to the bottom as quickly as possible. She’s gotten two raises, of 25 cents each, over the last year.
There are people in town who are nostalgic for the time when the mill filled the sky with black smoke and the furnaces churned all day. Not Ms. Gaugler. “These are secure jobs,” she said. “With the steel, you didn’t know if you would have a job the next day.”
Her father may have had a better deal at the mill — he got 13 weeks of vacation and “didn’t have to worry about bills every so often,” Ms. Gaugler said. But she only has an associate degree, and said this job pays better than most of her alternatives. It also comes with health insurance, paid time off and a 401(k) retirement plan.
Before the warehouses came to the area, it had little to offer in the way of decent-paying, low-skilled work. But Amazon saw something promising in the city’s bones.
It is flanked by Interstate 78, providing a gateway to the nation’s biggest metropolitan area — New York is 80 miles away — and putting seven other states within a day’s drive.
“It’s location, being able to serve customers on the Eastern Seaboard and the Mid-Atlantic,” said Ashley Robinson, an Amazon spokeswoman. “It’s the infrastructure available to move those trucks out of the Lehigh Valley. It’s the work force.”
The company opened two modest facilities outside Allentown, Bethlehem’s neighbor to the west, a place made famous by a Billy Joel song about the death of factory jobs. Other retailers rushed in, drawn partly by incentives, including abatements and credits, allowing companies that developed on the steel mill land to save hundreds of thousands on their tax bills over 10 years.
As a result, the stretch of eastern and central Pennsylvania that includes the Lehigh Valley has grown faster than any other market in the country over the last five years, according to CBRE. While retailers tend to bulk up their facilities with temporary helpers around the holidays — Amazon has announced plans to hire 120,000 seasonal employees by the end of the year — they have also taken on an army of full-time workers. Warehouse employment in a two-county area that includes Bethlehem jumped to 15,200 in 2017, from 5,200 in 2010.
“I don’t know of another place in the world that has gone from a submarket to a global hub in eight years,” said David Egan, the global head of industrial and logistics research at CBRE. “It’s undeniable that it is a key, crucial market for global trade.”
Some of the biggest players in the warehouse game have staked a claim to Lehigh Valley land. Walmart has two huge facilities in Bethlehem. FedEx is building one of its biggest ground locations in the nation in the area, and the United Parcel Service opened a new hub near the New Jersey border last year to handle the torrential volume of traffic coming through eastern Pennsylvania.
The boom in warehouses has created a seemingly endless appetite for stockers, pickers and packers, turning the town into a magnet for people in need of a second chance. Omar Pellot is one of them.
Mr. Pellot left the Bronx, where he was born, because it seemed as if the city had run out of jobs for people with his particular résumé.
He says he started dealing drugs at the age of 8, on the guidance of his father, a “drug dealer turned drug addict.” He was in and out of jail as a teenager and spent a year on Rikers Island as a 17-year-old, he said. After that stint, he had a hard time finding work in New York, so he relocated to Florida and eventually moved to the Lehigh Valley, where, he had heard, the job market was “awesome.”
He got a job at Amazon almost immediately. When the company asked about his background, he said, “I explained it to them — you know, I was young and naïve and stupid.”
In a year as a picker — retrieving items from vast shelving units — Mr. Pellot said he walked about 10 miles on his night shift, and got two raises that pushed his hourly pay to $14.30. He passed a test to become a forklift driver and has his sights set on becoming a supervisor.
Now 38, he spent his childhood “thinking that street life would make me a man,” he said. “But this is what makes me a man, working hard.”
The shifts in warehouses may be long, and the work tedious and exhausting, but they are a better bet for people like Mr. Pellot than anything else in eastern Pennsylvania. The average warehouse worker in the area earns $14.46 an hour, compared with $12.67 for those in retail sales and $10.85 for waiters.
“The conventional wisdom is that retail jobs are better and that losing them is bad for an economy,” said Don Cunningham, president of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation. “The reality is that fulfillment jobs are paying a higher wage and offering more long-term opportunity.”
Lingering over Bethlehem is the unnerving question of when, exactly, the robots will ruin the party. In a Walmart fulfillment center that takes up as much land as a big-league ballpark, machines have begun to take on some of the tasks involved in getting people their goods within a day of a click.
As boxes careen down a conveyor belt on their way out of the building, tiny devices known as “shoes” follow alongside and jerk forward to push the packages into chutes that funnel them into the truck they are destined for.
Box-shaped machines glide along shelves to snatch crates and deposit them onto a conveyor. There are no accidents on these routes — right before two boxes are about to crash into each other, a combination of sensors and software stops one and lets the other pass.
But for now, humans are still needed, in ever-increasing numbers.
“There’s still a lot of stuff that gets done not necessarily by hand, but aided by the use of labor,” said David Tarnosky, the general manager of the warehouse. Walmart started the year with around 1,100 full-time employees there, and doubled that number by October.
“We won’t stop hiring through peak of this year,” Mr. Tarnosky said. By this time next year, he will have hired hundreds more.
News Source: The New York Times
Read MoreReuters/21 October 2017
(Reuters) – The U.S government issued a rare public warning that sophisticated hackers are targeting energy and industrial firms, the latest sign that cyber attacks present an increasing threat to the power industry and other public infrastructure.
The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in a report distributed by email late on Friday that the nuclear, energy, aviation, water and critical manufacturing industries have been targeted along with government entities in attacks dating back to at least May.
The agencies warned that hackers had succeeded in compromising some targeted networks, but did not identify specific victims or describe any cases of sabotage.
The objective of the attackers is to compromise organizational networks with malicious emails and tainted websites to obtain credentials for accessing computer networks of their targets, the report said.
U.S. authorities have been monitoring the activity for months, which they initially detailed in a confidential June report first reported by Reuters. That document, which was privately distributed to firms at risk of attacks, described a narrower set of activity focusing on the nuclear, energy and critical manufacturing sectors.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Scott McConnell declined to elaborate on the information in the report or say what prompted the government to go public with the information at this time.
“The technical alert provides recommendations to prevent and mitigate malicious cyber activity targeting multiple sectors and reiterated our commitment to remain vigilant for new threats,” he said.
The FBI declined to comment on the report, which security researchers said described an escalation in targeting of infrastructure in Europe and the United States that had been described in recent reports from private firms, including Symantec Corp.
“This is very aggressive activity,” said Robert Lee, an expert in securing industrial networks.
Lee, chief executive of cyber-security firm Dragos, said the report appears to describe hackers working in the interests of the Russian government, though he declined to elaborate. Dragos is also monitoring other groups targeting infrastructure that appear to be aligned with China, Iran, North Korea, he said.
The hacking described in the government report is unlikely to result in dramatic attacks in the near term, Lee said, but he added that it is still troubling: “We don’t want our adversaries learning enough to be able to do things that are disruptive later.”
The report said that hackers have succeeded in infiltrating some targets, including at least one energy generator, and conducting reconnaissance on their networks. It was accompanied by six technical documents describing malware used in the attacks.
Homeland Security “has confidence that this campaign is still ongoing and threat actors are actively pursuing their objectives over a long-term campaign,” the report said.
The report said the attacker was the same as one described by Symantec in a September report that warned advanced hackers had penetrated the systems controlling operations of some U.S. and European energy companies.
Symantec researcher Vikram Thakur said in an email that much of the contents of Friday’s report were previously known within the security community.
Cyber-security firm CrowdStrike said the technical indicators described in the report suggested the attacks were the work of a hacking group it calls Berserk Bear, which is affiliated with the Russian Federation and has targeted the energy, financial and transportation industries.
“We have not observed any destructive action by this actor,” CrowdStrike Vice President Adam Meyers said in an email.
News Source: Reuters
Read MoreThe Malaysian Reserve/19 October 2017
Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) warned that the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector is heading for stagnation, if producers and consumers failed to collaborate to ensure growth and sustainability of the industry.
Its president and group CEO Datuk Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin said while LNG demand has increased, there is a possibility of industry stagnation if LNG prices do not encourage necessary investments to sustain the business.
“Today, players are cancelling and delaying projects in tandem with the LNG prices. Without sufficient investments, both buyers and sellers face an uncertain future in terms of business sustainability and energy security,” he said at the LNG Producer- Consumer Conference 2017 in Tokyo, Japan.
His statement was released by the state-owned oil company yesterday. Petronas is the world’s third-largest LNG producer.
Wan Zulkiflee said Petronas was forced to abandon its proposed LNG project in Canada due to the prolonged depressed prices and unfavourable market conditions.
However, he said the current market dynamics stimulated internal efficiency improvements that have provided Petronas with better agility as an integrated end-to-end LNG player to accelerate growth once the industry is on an upturn.
The national energy company recently celebrated its 10,000th cargo from its Bintulu
LNG Complex in Malaysia, delivered to Japan on Oct 4. This further cements its sterling reputation as a reliable LNG solution producer and supplier with an impeccable track record of not missing a single cargo.
“With deeper resource pools, we are able to invest in people, technology and innovation to provide energy solutions that go beyond just selling and delivering LNG.
“Through these investments, we aspire to help create a more sustainable LNG market that is able to fuel the world’s economies,” he said.
Wan Zulkiflee said all parties should engage in early collaboration to work towards mutually-favourable market conditions to encourage investments for business longevity and long-term supply stability.
“While current market dynamics are not encouraging conversations about sustainable gas pricing, it is in our interest, both as sellers and as buyers, to bring this up.
“Although buyers’ considerations remain in our best interests, the current market volatility necessitates the security of demand.
“This is imperative for the producers to continue invest- ing to support the upstream and LNG value chain in a timely manner,” he said.
Gas prices have plummeted from a high of US$5.39 (RM22.75) on Jan 29, 2014, to US$2.96 on Tuesday. — TMR
News Source: The Malaysian Reserve
Read MoreThe Malaysian Reserve/19 October 2017
Malaysia could cost-effectively reduce 37% of greenhouse gas emissions required by 2030 to prevent risky global warming levels through natural climate solutions, based on a study by scientists from The Nature Conservancy and 15 other institutions.
According to the study, Malaysia can cut greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees, improving soil health, as well as protecting forests, peat-lands and mangroves.
“The way we manage the lands in the future could deliver 37% of the solution to climate change. If we are serious about climate change, we have to get serious about investing in nature, as well as in renewable energy and clean transport,” The Nature Conservancy CEO Mark Tercek said in a recent statement.
Tercek said that current impacts on the land cause a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. He added that while food and timber production is in high demand, climate change must also be addressed.
Mission 2020 Convener and United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change former head Christiana Figueres said that land use is a key sector where emissions can be reduced and carbon can be absorbed.
“This new study shows how we can massively increase action on land use — in tandem with increased action on energy, transport, finance, industry and infrastructure — to put emissions on their downward trajectory by 2020,” she said.
Figueres added that natural climate solutions are important in ensuring full decarbonisation and while simultaneously boosting jobs and protecting communities in both developed and developing countries.
The study is expected to cushion the government’s attempts to manage lands better, as well as the shift to renewable energy and electric cars.
A climate discussion involving world leaders will be held in Germany early next month, organised by the UN.
The federal government announced its target for 52 low-carbon cities by 2020, which will be driven by the Low Carbon Cities Framework (LCCF), a collaboration between the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water and Malaysian Green Technology Corp inked on Monday.
The LCCF is an infrastructure driven to aid authorities and urban developers to embrace low-carbon initiatives.
News Source: The Malaysian Reserve
Read MoreThe Malaysian Reserve/19 October 2017
LONDON • UK unemployment held at a 42-year low in the three months through August and the number of people in work approached a record high, according the figures published yesterday.
The latest snapshot of the labour market from the Office for National Statistics may help to explain why the Bank of England (BoE) appears to be edging toward its first interestrate increase for a decade.
In evidence to lawmakers on Tuesday, BoE governor Mark Carney made clear that the erosion of slack in the economy is the primary concern as policymakers prepare for their Nov 2 meeting. He said a rate increase would probably be needed in the “coming months,” repeating the recent signal from the bank.
Wage growth was little changed at just over 2% — well behind the rate of inflation — but officials are signalling they are no longer prepared to wait for a pick-up before tightening policy.
Still, not everyone on the Monetary Policy Committee is on board with that idea. Dave Ramsden said on Tuesday that the lack of wage growth means he sees little sign of second-round effects from higher inflation, and that domestic price pressures remain subdued.
Responding to the labour-market data, Elizabeth Martins at HSBC Holdings plc said the BoE is “still on” for a November rate hike, though it may not be a unanimous vote.
The jobless rate stood at 4.3% in the latest period, staying below the 4.5% rate regarded by the BoE as the “equilibrium rate” which starts to fan inflationary pressures. The number of people looking for work fell 52,000 to 1.44 million.
Employment rose 94,000 to 32.1 million. At 75.1%, the employment rate is just below the record 75.3% recorded in May to July.
With the labour market tight and Brexit curbing immigration, boosting growth without generating inflation may require a significant improvement in productivity, something considered unlikely given the dismal performance of recent years and the effect Brexit is having on investment. — Bloomberg
News Source: The Malaysian Reserve
Read MoreAsian Banking and Finance/11 October 2017
Consumer loan growth will outpace corporate loans.
According to Moody’s, growth of consumer loans will continue to outpace corporate loans over the next 12-18 months as stable employment, rising income levels and increasing banking penetration from current low levels fuel steady demand for auto loans and credit card facilities.
“At the same time, banks are being encouraged to pursue active growth in the consumer segment because of higher yields of consumer loans relative to corporate loans. This is despite corporate loans still dominating banks’ loan books, with corporate and small and medium enterprise (SME) loans together representing about 80% of banks’ gross loans,” added Moody’s.
News Source: Asian Banking and Finance
Read MoreHR in Asia/11 October 2017
Under a new scheme piloted by the Ministry of Manpower, local companies can tap into foreign trainer potentials from overseas to help fill skill gaps in their organisation. Named as the Capability Transfer Programme, the initiative will help boost crucial areas in which local companies lack expertise.
During Human Capital Partnership event on Tuesday (Oct 10), Minister for Manpower Lim Swee Say said the programme will focus on small and medium-sized enterprises and organisations that have high impacts on the entire industry. Mr Lim gave an example of a local interior furnishing company which wanted to improve its capabilities in healthcare interior furnishing. The scheme will provide 30 to 90 percent of co-funding that can be used to salary and training support to both foreign and local trainers.
First launched in November 2016, the programme aims to help employers develop their workforces. Besides local training, the new funding support will be available for overseas on-the-job-training as well. Additionally, the ministry will also help facilitate work permits for foreign trainers if needed, Channel News Asia reports.
Mr Lim emphasised that Singapore needs to ensure that it has more innovative and productive economy in the future. He also pointed out that it is important for all parties to work together in creating a more inclusive future growth. Further, Mr Lim said that Singapore’s resident working-age population is projected to see a declining figure for about 0.1 percent per year on average from 2015 to 2025, indicating a reversal from 1.3 percent annual growth between 2005 and 2015.
Meanwhile, the Human Capital Partnership Programme has been extended to invite 56 more new participating companies, including BreadTalk, Gardens by the Bay and Jurong Port, bringing the total number of partners to 130.
In an effort to give better support for industries and companies, the Ministry of Manpower and Workforce Singapore are also collaborating with other agencies such as the Economic Development Board, SPRING Singapore and the Singapore Tourism Board.
“We all share the same objective of speeding up capability transfer by reaching out to a wider base of companies in more sectors, so as to improve the skills and capability, jobs and careers of our local workers,” said Mr Lim.
News Source: HR in Asia
Read MoreAsian Banking and Finance/10 October 2017
He reveals that the bank has been working not only with large enterprises such as Tencent and Alibaba.
Michael Wang is the deputy general manager of e-finance centre at Bank of China (Hong Kong). Prior to joining the Group, Wang also served as general manager of the financial planning department and Shangbu Sub-branch, Bank of China (Shenzhen Branch). He was previously the deputy general manager of interbank and corporate department, WeBank, Tencent. Wang graduated from Zhongnan University of Economics with a Bachelor’s Degree in International Finance. He completed the MBA in Finance Program (FMBA), jointly offered by The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Tsinghua University.
In this exclusive interview with Asian Banking and Finance, Wang shares more about the digital banking landscape in Hong Kong, BOHCK’s initiatives with fintechs, his business philosophies, and goals.
How is the Hong Kong banking sector affected by the big push for digitalisation in the financial services industry?
In recent years, digitalisation has profoundly changed the banking industry. It can be observed that the development paths of fintech and banking digitalisation in Europe, US, and mainland China are quite different. For Europe and the US, the markets are relatively mature, digital innovation is more focused on the reform and advancement in systems and processes. There are also banks with strong technological sense joining the market.
However, there is not much change in main financial products offered. For mainland China, it has a vast territory and a large population. The financial service available for the general public is insufficient in the past. With the rapid development of the internet and e-commerce, we can see great breakthroughs in the aspects of mobile payment, wealth management, and online financing. These have transformed its banking industry accordingly.
Hong Kong has a well-developed infrastructure, advanced offline service platform, as well as well-established regulatory and supervision framework. The development path in Hong Kong’s banking industry is similar to that of a mature market which focused more on the advancement in system processes and services and improvement in channel management. And we attach high attention to consumer safety and protection of their rights and interests. For example, banks in Hong Kong are racing to apply new technology in biometrics and authentication such as fingerprint, finger vein, soft-token and voice recognition, etc.
Besides, banks are fostering intelligentisation of bank branches and services, such as iService, customer service, Chat robot, etc., to provide customers with self-servicing and automated servicing modes. Another example is that many banks have been exploring the application of blockchain and distributed ledger technology in use of mortgage loans and trade finance. Furthermore, SVF licensed payment companies in Hong Kong are also working proactively with banks to achieve a breakthrough in the mobile payment market.
In fact, it is hard to compare the stage of digitalisation and innovation of the banking industry with other regions as it depends on the characteristics of the corresponding market. For Hong Kong, both regulatory authorities and the banking sector are supportive and attach importance to innovation. We place a high value on the protection for depositors and investors, as well as customer privacy. Based on this ground, when undergoing the digitalisation process of Hong Kong’s banking industry, there are two notable features that deserve special attention.
Firstly, banks are eager to collaborate with fintech and internet companies. Hong Kong, as a city with perfectly independent development of fintech and internet innovation, it is arduous to benefit from economies of scale. Nevertheless, Hong Kong has a well-developed regulatory system. The banking industry offers talents and professionals and various financial services, together with the strong influence as an International Financial Centre. These attract technology companies to collaborate with banks in Hong Kong, jointly promoting innovation and enhancing the status of the financial industry.
Secondly, we have the ability to integrate the Eastern and Western achievements and advantages in the fintech field. As mentioned above, Hong Kong is a mature financial centre, and drawing on the digitalisation experience of banks in Europe and US, we have already achieved an obvious digitalisation progress on the improvement in systems, processes, and other services for our banking industry. At the same time, with reference to the successful attempt of mainland China to reach its billions of users through e-finance, Hong Kong is also “going out” to reach the market in Southeast Asia.
With a large population in Southeast Asia, financial service availability and penetration is insufficient, and hence, our banking sector could have benefitted and gained experience by serving people’s financial needs in Southeast Asia, e.g. exploring the mobile payment market as mentioned above to offer one-stop mobile consumption experience. With the use of digital products, business models are no longer limited geographically.
Please tell us a little bit about your most recent initiatives around digital and mobile banking. What were the challenges you encountered in rolling out these initiatives? What are the results?
We actively improve customer experience and make functional advancement on both online and offline platform. For example, we are currently revamping our mobile banking App with more personalised features, and promoted “Smart Branch” to offer an enhanced range of e-services that deliver innovative and personalised banking experience to customers when they visit our branch. We aim to build an omnichannel for seamless multichannel experience.
Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, once mentioned that both internet and mobile banking services in Hong Kong is not user-friendly enough as there are dozens of functions which can be improved. This actually can be traceable to the historical background and other reasons.
When we compare Hong Kong and mainland China in the aspect of population, mainland China has hundreds of millions of internet users for the process of trial, error testing, and adjustment, which built a comparative advantage in creating better online products. As a matter of fact, Hong Kong has a well-developed infrastructure on offline platform comparing with online. But it is undeniable that further improvement is needed in user interface design on Hong Kong’s online platforms, not just for the banking industry.
Fostering Mobile Payment Development is also one of our recent initiatives. 2017 can be called as the base year of Mobile Payments for Hong Kong. In 2017, we have collaborated with different third parties to promote local mobile payment usage in Hong Kong. BOCHK does have the edge on mobile payment development as we have a large customer base and cross-border advantage. When compared with mainland customers, Hong Kong customers tend to be more risk-aware. Thus, comparing to those SVF licensed companies, the involvement of banks can give customers more confidence in using mobile payment services.
We have been spending effort in exploring the development of internet products, especially in the field of investments and loans. When we consider Hong Kong’s position as an international financial centre and intermediary, we can expand our business to other regions by the means of digitalisation and products with internet and mobile features to allow occurrence of cross-boundary business.
When working towards these digital initiatives, there are many challenges to be faced. As a listed and traditional bank, the legacy of the bank’s traditional business and operation has to be considered. We have to strike a balance between the established traditional business models and innovation. It requires us to overcome internal resistance and overturn operation traditions. Furthermore, it takes time to go through the process of change in customers’ habits and market recognition of new digital banking products. In addition, we have to comply with different regulatory and legal concerns as a bank when dealing with the use of big data, collaboration with third parties, and prudent risk assessment for protecting the customers.
What do you consider as your biggest achievement so far as the Deputy General Manager of E-Finance Centre at BOCHK? How has the company progressed under your leadership?
I believe that bank-fintech collaboration can help transform the bank’s innovation. We have been promoting collaborations with third parties. We work proactively with them to strengthen efforts on innovation of technologies, products, and channels for the development of digitalisation. Not only large enterprises such as Tencent and Alibaba, the collaborations also include some leading companies in the field of fintech in the niche market.
Other than the cooperation of specific projects, such collaborations gave us insight and broaden our view in the fintech area. From the bank’s point of view, except account opening in counters, deposit and loan and payment and settlement, these leading companies have the ability to construct thoroughly and comprehensively products for a specific market segment.
Initiating cross-department project in a large scale is also one of the achievements. For example, to foster the digitalisation of channel (branches) management, it involves many departments to engage in, which include front, middle, and back offices. Hence, driving its progress takes extensive effort, especially when colleagues are under tremendous pressure daily. This takes determination and foresight.
BOCHK places a high value on the importance of innovation. In recent years, we have pioneered numbers of innovative technologies’ application in banking, bringing new ideas to fruition. Recently, we have initiated agile development to existing “waterfall” project development approach. Although this approach has just started, effects have already appeared in accelerating the process of a project.
In the process of collaboration with third parties or even the talents recruitment process, I can strongly feel that that market image of BOCHK have been changing from a traditional bank to an innovative bank which pioneers in bringing new ideas to the market. Such a success is the result of combined efforts of the group with the lead of the BOCHK management team. Although changes have just started, they have already been rewarding and inspiring for our further development on innovative products.
What are your key business philosophies?
“Know your weakness and focus” is my key business philosophy which can also be applicable to our department and the bank. It is crucial to know the shortcomings and make your focal point stand out. Banks are encountering rising pressure as there are challenges from different aspects. Developing strategic plans is also challenging as we have to cope with obstacles and the corresponding trade-offs when making choices.
In addition, I unequivocally agree with the beliefs of Tokugawa Ieyasu, for example, “life is like unto a long journey with a heavy burden”. This can also be applied in the realm of business practice as growth and achievements come through the greatest and continuous effort.
What three goals are you focussed on in the next 12 months?
Firstly, we aim to take a market leading position in mobile banking and integrating digitalisation into an omnichannel experience. Smartphones have been adding technology into our daily lives. Hence, to foster better customer experience, it is necessary to tighten digital and physical channels to provide digital end-to-end banking services and offer more functional and user-friendly mobile banking service to our customers.
Secondly, to develop substantial products in the mobile internet aspect. It’s rare to see anyone without a smartphone nowadays. In Hong Kong, it leads other Asian countries in mobile internet usage with 96% of smartphone users accessing internet via smartphone. Looking forward, we will work furiously on developing mobile internet products to meet the evolving financial needs of our customers.
Thirdly, we will offer breakthrough fintech products for our business development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Big Bay Area and Southeast Asia. We would like leverage fintech product offerings to expand our customer base and serve the financial needs of the non-local customers.
News Source: Asian Banking and Finance
Read MoreHealth and Safety at Work/10 October 2017
Poppy Jaman, chief executive of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, on the latest research on mental health in the workplace, how her organisation can help, and its new Workplace Wellbeing Toolkit.
Each year, around 10 million adults in the UK will experience mental ill health, meaning one in four of us will experience a mental health issue at some point in our lifetime. Over the past decade, awareness of mental health has accelerated, and more and more employers now understand that supporting wellbeing and mental health is a core part of a comprehensive approach to health and safety.
With “workplace” as the theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day, this offers employers a valuable opportunity to address how mental health is approached in their organisations. Last week, we partnered with Business in the Community and others to launch the Mental Health at Work Report 2017, which reveals that three out of every five (60%) employees have experienced mental health issues, where work was a related factor.
While it’s evident that attitudes towards mental health in the workplace are shifting, this report demonstrates that employers are still failing to translate increased awareness into action. Worryingly, the figures reveal as many as 1.2 million people have faced disciplinary action, demotion or dismissal, after disclosing a mental health issue at work. That’s 15% of the working population and a troubling rise of 6%, when compared with the findings in last year’s report.
Whether your business is big or small, it is clear that having support available in the workplace is paramount. The report suggests that only 11% of people currently feel able to disclose a mental health issue to their line manager so awareness, and talking openly about mental health, is a great first step in creating a mentally healthy organisation.
However, to better support employees, transform practices and truly embed a “whole organisational” approach to workplace wellbeing, employers should consider the offer of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training.
To date, over 206,000 people in England have gained Mental Health First Aid skills. Enlightened employers – from the construction industry through to the financial sector – are training staff to support the mental and emotional wellbeing of their teams by becoming Mental Health First Aiders. This means there are members of staff trained in how to recognise the symptoms of common mental health issues and can effectively guide people towards the right support.
“We want businesses to maintain this momentum by continuing to disseminate skills and awareness – through training employees as in-house Mental Health First Aid Instructors, running webinars or creating a peer support network amongst other options.”
Construction company Bowmer and Kirkland has started a programme of training focusing on mental wellbeing, which supervisory staff will be required to attend. As Mark Blundy, group health and safety director, explains: “Mental health issues affecting workers in construction are well publicised, if not well understood, by our workforce. It is not just about extremes of stress or suicide, and life outside the workplace adds to the pressures of travelling and site work. We’ve found Mental Health First Aid England’s one-day course complements our established health and wellbeing strategy.”
Meanwhile at business consultancy EY, more than 700 people, including senior leaders, have been trained in the techniques. Maggie Stilwell, managing partner for talent in the UK and Ireland, commented: “We want to better equip our people to identify when a person is struggling at work, both physically and mentally, and help them to get the support they need.
“At EY we publish our psychological care pathways, run a Mental Health Buddy scheme, and host workshops and webcasts on physical and mental wellbeing. We also share the stories of our people, on how they manage their mental health, to help break down the stigma often attached.
“We want to nurture a working environment where physical and mental health are regarded and treated equally, and people are not afraid to talk about their psychological wellbeing. To that end, what has been particularly impactful is our senior leaders sharing their own vulnerabilities and mental health experiences, helping to position mental and physical health as topics we can all talk and learn about.”
For this year’s World Mental Health Day, our organisation has launched a Workplace Wellbeing Toolkit which illustrates a strategic step by step process to achieving this “whole organisational approach”. This includes advice on how to lay the groundwork for providing an open environment to talk about mental health in the workplace – providing tips and guidance on how to start a meaningful conversation with a colleague about mental health. Following this, we encourage employers to empower their staff to support each other, either through quality mental health training or other available resources.
Finally, we want businesses to maintain this momentum by continuing to disseminate skills and awareness – through training employees as in-house Mental Health First Aid Instructors, running webinars or creating a peer support network amongst other options.
This World Mental Health Day, we urge employers of all shapes and sizes to act now and take a proactive step towards creating a mentally healthy organisation.
News Source: Health and Safety at Work
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