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Reluctance To Go Mobile Inhibiting Innovation In Financial Services (enterprisersproject.com)
Lemeowski writes: Compliance concerns have long prevented financial services businesses from adopting mobile capabilities as quickly as other industries. But Yvette Jackson of Thomson Reuters argues that technology advancements have made compliance worries of the past now obsolete, and financial services companies are running out of excuses for not going mobile. She stresses that holding onto this reluctance will cause businesses to miss opportunities, limit innovation, and turn away talent by restraining their workflow. She says, "Any millennial joining the financial services industry, who expects a flawless user experience both at home and at work, is – I'm sure – surprised on their first day in the office when they get to their desk and are transported back in time by the technology they're expected to use."
Bullshit
Sounds right. I recently applied for a programming job at a bank. After the interview and showing me the place, they offered me the job. I politely declined. Then I quickly closed my accounts and moved to a more modern bank. Why? That bank literally uses MSAccess tables to store ALL of the customer data. And VB5 "processes" to interact with the feds. Un-believable. They are still doing it to this day. Ironically enough, they now have a web presence that doesn't work 99% of the time.
...allows financial workers to have some semblance of a real life outside work. Once they've gone fully mobile, workers will spend 20 hours a day looking at tiny cellphone screens and be expected to be on 24/7 call. It's already almost there, but transition to full mobile will finish it.
... Will be damaging. Yes, mobile banking may be the future, but if banks can't secure their *own* online services, how the hell does the industry think mobile banking will be close to secure?
We see the same thing in national defense, health care, critical infrastructure, etc., where the industries are heavily regulated. As usual, journalists have not even the first clue as to the dangers of regulation, the largest of which being the substantial reduction in investment of new technologies in the regulated industry. The reason this doesn't happen is because the industries are protected by the regulations, so there is no need to innovate. They make the money whether they innovate or not, so the innovations are largely and correctly perceived as merely an additional cost with increased risk.
Every competent bank offers a mobile app which lets you manipulate your accounts and deposit checks via OCR, and companies like Vanguard and Fidelity offer mobile apps, too.
For support on-call personnel, there are laptops (bigger screens and real keyboards) plus tethering.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I'm far to be a millenial and I worked in the past and I am still working for a financial institution and some days I believe I am a paleontologist. They are still running Windows XP on a majority of the workstations with IE8 and Java 6. They have architects lagging behind to implement a nearly two decades obsolete architecture. The security guys are sleeping hard, I found many potential security holes in the environment, while security guys are still talking about what a hard to guess password is. I am looking to escape this nightmare.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Wasn't that the reason they gave for the lead up to the last crash?
What they are Fully out of reasons they can try.
The Cost of failure is very high.
I haven't done a whole lot of work in financial services, but what I have done was with ancient in-house software that had clunky, keyboard-only interfaces that would make any self-identified "millennial" break down crying. It was also rock solid software that didn't crash randomly or even slow down. It didn't lose data or corrupt files or update fifteen times in an hour. It worked exactly the way it was expected to work: the same way it had worked for decades.
You see, when you're working with millions of dollars in other people's money, a "flawless user experience" is a significantly less important aspect of software development than never fucking up.
I have a feeling that the financial services industry isn't going to miss millennial "talent" who needs to be able to dick around with their accounts on their smartphone anytime, anywhere.
Just what banks need. Another back door.
EHRs are not helping healthcare. MOOCs are not helping education.
Criminals love all of the data though.
Trying to figure out if the author is shilling some service, or just woefully inept? Ah, but what can you expect from a CIO focused article...
--WooooHoooo--
what bank/broker does not provide mobile services?
that millenials are allowed to have any responsibility worth having in financial services industry? I have karma to burn, so fume and mod down all you want. But isn't this orthodoxy in technology actually a good thing if it keeps people with poor impulse control away from making decisions about significant-size financial transactions?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It seems that everyone is banking has this damned herd mentality rush to push transaction processing through a mobile device. Stop for a second, and think about how this might play out.
Who wins, who loses?
How much money is involved, and where did the financial risk get transferred?
Again, you the smart device owner (or lessor) get's shafted in this push.
What the heck happens when you lose control of your phone, hacked, stolen, othewise. Have fun with that action..
I sure don't want my bank account's security left open on a developer's tablet at Starbucks while they chat-up the barista. So please, if you hear about jobs where workers can have access to sensitive customer/patient information while downing shots at the bar please let us know. This business does not respect the security of my information. Working on off-line dev code from home is fine. Access to data off site is not!
Modern app appers use AppCoin or AppApp to app other apps, not LUDDITE banks!
Apps!
So you have old computers, and sometimes work is you know, hard. Why again do you want the facebook-checking, parent-hovering, entitled millenial workforce?
Who cares if clueless millennials expect secure financial software to look like some dopey app? That's their failure in not understanding the financial industry or business in general. Were we supposed to believe that poorly-trained children should lead the way to an insecure future?
I'm with Chase and about to drop them because their solution to "security" is come in to see a teller and get your card numbers changed every 3 months instead of actually.. yaknow... hiring a real IT security staff to handle things.
As someone who works at a decent-sized bank, and knowing what other 'big' banks are doing around the area, I really wonder what the writer was thinking here.
Financial services are roughly three categories:
* Backoffice -- Mostly IT, so maintenance, development etc. (on aging platforms from time to time, but that doesn't matter). Not something you want to do mobile, you want a decent workstation. Maybe outsourced, maybe in-house (if deemed sensitive enough)
* Frontoffice: helpdesks, financial advisors, etc. They already have apps/tablet software, etc, so they can come to your house to sell you their product. So, nothing new there
* management: doesn't need anything, really. They might want mobile, but all they need is to receive their email, make minutes, etc. And they do that on mobile devices just fine already
(of course, this is traditional banking, not the asset/trust/stock/portfolio management... But even then, they still wouldn't want to do that mobile)
So really, are there *any* advantages to going mobile? The article (which, yes, I browsed), is about employees wanting to go mobile. Really, nobody wants that but some lazy-ass phonepeckering controlfreak manager (and I mean lazy-ass because if you want to do your work quickly, you want a decent workstation to type mails at speed, or call while typing... with 10 fingers instead of one).
It's bad clickbait...
"Any millennial joining the financial services industry, who expects a flawless user experience both at home and at work, is – I'm sure – surprised on their first day in the office when they get to their desk and are transported back in time by the technology they're expected to use."
Too fucking bad. Newer isn't always better or more reliable. People / companies paid money for stuff that works, and they don't mind if it keeps working.
She stresses that holding onto this reluctance will cause businesses to miss opportunities, limit innovation, and turn away talent by restraining their workflow.
Perhaps, or perhaps it'll just turn away those easily distracted by shiny new - squirrel !
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I currently work for a bank and the interpretation you give isnt the real facts. Internally the core software determines how and what type of access you need. You cannot access any customer data using a modern device. The core data systems do not allow for it. Would you want your financial data to be accessible from the internet? I am not just talking about your balance but the information that drives it, SSN, Birth Date, ATM PIN, for example. ZFerrini
This woman has no idea what she is talking about. I am posting anonymously because I work for one of the top five banks in the US as a systems administrator whose job is to protect internal IT assets, create monitoring tools, and help make long-term decisions. I am also writing this as a pissed off individual who just read an article written by a complete moron on the subject.
One - my bank that I am employed at has tools and resources that all web based, both internally and for the most part, for all of our customer-facing functions. Most of our sites are at minimum CSS2 compliant, thus making our sites responsive and able to be viewed in a variety of browsers. In addition, like many other banks, we have customer apps for the major platforms. So as far as not being able to be used from a smartphone, or in some other modern manner, I cry foul.
Two - I work from home a lot. We utilize many up to date products / protocols to enable remote workers to access their files, team sharing resources, etc. HR, calendars, employee resources, etc. are all available. Many of these are utilized by several in-house apps / sites to provide custom work environments / workflows for various teams and departments. I operate both Windows and Linux servers (been a UNIX man since before I was out of junior high school), and I employ modern tools. My favorite tool is my Hackintosh running a remote access application ;)
Three - Like it or not, banking and financial institutions are required by Federal (and in many cases International) law to adhere to various standards and auditing procedures, and yes, we get audited quite a lot - which is something the average consumer should WANT AND REQUIRE by any banking institution. Some of this may utilize non-post 2010 technology and/or buzzwords, but it works, and like it or not, it is well understood by both the teams that support these installs as well as those auditing them. You don't change something because some dumbass somewhere said "Wow! This website says this is the next thing - we change NOW!" Plus, like it or not, non-IT people are very difficult to teach / retrain on how to use a new environment, and so is the Federal Government. Sometimes things aren't changed because of some long-standing regulation that controls how changes occur. Perhaps this is why the American banking system is one of the most stable things around... (I expect arguments on that statement...)
Four - Millennials are often not qualified to understand the hows and whys something was implemented a particular way. Sure, their high-falooting college edumacation gave them everything they need to know about IT, so the first thing they do is come in is to run their mouths, and then get frustrated because no one older or more experienced / wiser seems to want to immediately jump on board and run with their new ideas. Sure, new ideas should be explored, but only in time and with the appropriate amount of study and testing. I spend the majority of my days creating tools to help detect and resolve problems on multiple environments automatically. I have to keep abreast on everything going on in the networking and security communities. So, I understand the potential issues with every change I recommend or even make on how to do something. I listen to all the ideas that are brought before me, but I also have the experience to know when something is more or less a fad, and when something can truly improve the workflow for myself, my team, or enterprise-wide. Legacy tools and code are going to be present everywhere for some reason.
Five - Tables and smartphones are wonderful things, but I personally can't be productive in my job using a tablet or an iPad, no matter what someone else might think. I need a laptop or a personal computer that I can run a shell on, etc. Another way to look at this is how can an organization adapt to allow for many different types of technology to be used by people with varying needs as long as their jobs are performed correctly? Has this author never heard of A
I am flabbergasted to the extent "professionals" in financial services, including accountants, brokers, etc. rely on either faxing or plain email for document transmittal and signature (Real Estate seems somewhat better, at least in my limited experience). "Print, sign, scan and return this form" or "Email us last year's tax return and W2s" It's appalling and proper document management should be much more of a priority than updating (or infecting) a web site to make it responsive or force the usage of some annoying app that wants rights to everything on my device so I can check the status of my account.
I have a brokerage account with Principal. A few months ago they "updated" their site and since then I have been nearly unable to download statements (which are rendered back-end as landscape PDF even though they are portrait documents, and their busted site won't properly open the document because of a JavaScript error - I have to sniff out the link in the page source and sometimes I can get to a report that way). Pages are riddled with large amounts of wasted white space, displaying much less information then they used to. The site is pretty useless and I have to call my broker now to get anything done - at least until I move my investments elsewhere. Even the broker often can't use the site, he has to call the home office because a good amount of the functionality he needs wasn't prioritized in the responsive site rebuild.
I want core functionality on the computer-friendly website prioritized, because my computer (not tablet, not phone) is the place where I can store, edit, mark-up and archive any kind of file. Like it or not, financial service transactions, information and reporting are still often document-driven. Then, and only then go build an app that I am not going to download anyway because I have enough crap on my phone already.
But then, once a project gets to the point where technical requirements need to be specified in detail, the pains start. The banks marketing department wants "everything to work with just one click and without cumbersome login (just re-use the Facebook OpenID)", and the legal and security deparment of the same bank of course want tight security, confirmation dialogs and limits to what a user can do to himself, data protection etc. etc. etc...
At that point, I really hate it that our customers (the Banks) think that we can wield some magic wand and turn completely contradicting requirements into a workable specification.
Fancy, colorful "apps" that behave like your 12-year-old-daughter's favorite social networking toy will just never be secure tools for serious investors.
The financial services industry, who expects a captive user base both at home and at work, will – I'm sure – be surprised in the next few years when they check their quarterly reports and find that the technology they're using and services they provide, have completely removed them from the arena in which new potential customers look for financial services.
Yeah, I've found financial services to be ridiculously backwards when it comes to technology. I once had to help a senior citizen with his trashed Windows computer. The whole thing was so messed up that the only solution was a reinstall, and of course he had never held on to the required reinstall media. So, to get him going quickly and cheaply, I backed up his files and installed Linux Mint on the computer. Only one problem: he did small-time stock trading as a hobby, and the proprietary web tools provided by his online stock broker service were Silverlight-only.
I called the customer service line, and, after being condescending brushed off when I pointed out that even Microsoft had dropped support for Silverlight, then being politely told to #$%& off when I mentioned Linux, I found a working solution involving Pipelight. Now he's much happier with Linux Mint than he was with Windows.
Now, why am I recounting this story? This was 2 weeks before Windows 10 was released, and Edge doesn't support Silverlight. Joe Average Windows User doesn't know about other browsers, and wouldn't know how to change the default away from Edge anyway. If Windows 10 ever does manage to get any traction, this finance firm will likely watch its customers dry up quickly. Though that's still not quite as bad as a certain country that still conducts all of its financial business with ActiveX.
The financial industry needs to be shutdown, burned down, all our cash returned, lock up the principal offenders, and rebuilt from scratch. These people are fucking pirates and murderers. When are we going to do something about it? When you all are fucking homeless and starving?
Microsoft still issues updates to Silverlight. They may have officially stopped supporting it, but that seems more of a legal trick to drop liability for any damages which may result from using it. The platform itself is alive and well, it just has the same status as all of Google's "beta" projects: not official.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Windows 10 supports IE.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I agree with you 100%
The desktop PC running XP as an OS so that it can then serve as a terminal to some other system is bought and paid fro, as well as proven and more than adequate for the terminal software. They simply have zero need fro anything else.
The network is secured so, even if XP has more holes than Swiss cheese, the systems are firewalled off and unreachable by whatever nasty might be floating around. Sure, they could replace it all with some Wyse terminals or some other similar terminal server hardware, but that costs. It costs a lot. All the terminals, all the labor, all the training. All the backend servers for the terminals to connect to....
It makes zero sense to spend the money when there is no need to. I guess if you need new shiny, don't work in an industry that doesn't do shiny.
Squirrel!
I worked in both financial and startups. The article is flawed. Going mobile is suicide for the kind of information and work we do in finance. It would be a disaster security wise (not compliance wise).
Also the other posters clearly do not have a grasp of the financial industry. No one is still using XP and if they are, we are putting high and mighty pressure on them to stop. Won't say what we use, but the other postings seem totally wrong. In finance we are ALWAYS on the bleeding edge but security is paramount. What we do... again will not say, but mobile is just not secure enough, and the latest and greatest systems aren't always best.
Mobile seems to be getting less secure with every Android and Apple release. Its gives me the willies. Its all barely secure, and someone thinks its a good idea to move all of your information there.... you're all insane!
Millennials are fine with what we have and do and a key part of it... Age matters not! We have ancients and millennials working together in harmony... I see no difference between us all, contrary to all the hype and boring meetings on age-cultural differences.
The article makes a good point but misses out on the meta-discussion, the liberal media pushing for innovations isn't going to be taken seriously.
I never use mobile platforms for anything that involves sensitive information because iOS and Android are the most insecure platforms around. Add to that the fact that the device most often lost or left in insecure locations is your phone and no one with any common sense would ever use their mobile device for anything that they actually cared about.
He who has the money makes the rules.
"Any millennial joining the financial services industry, who expects a flawless user experience both at home and at work, is – I'm sure – surprised on their first day in the office when they get to their desk and are transported back in time by the technology they're expected to use."
And that millennial, my good man, would be a fucking idiot. There is no such thing as flawless user experience. Most systems, most procedures have flaws.
From these types of articles, it seems that millennials are fucking idiots that can't think for themselves and if they don't have things spoon fed to them they can't function. Talk about the moron generation. I hope, for their sake, this is not true because reality is going to eat them alive they will forever be consigned to the dustbin of uselessness.
It's a great great thing that there's no mobile financial applications. The security on those end points is ridiculous.
They're talking about the ability to work from outside the office and how old the laptops are that they're given to work on (basically whining about not being given iPad Pros and being able to store customer data on DropBox). I spent 3 years at one of the largest banks on Earth helping with their transition off of Windows XP. After 3 years they still are not done. Standard issue laptop was a Lenovo T61 circa 2007. You can fit all of your data on a 40GB 4200RPM hard drive with full disk encryption, right? No SSD, no TouchID, no Ultra-anything. You are given a device that runs the software the company relies on and that's it. The software being IE9 with Java 6_35 and Adobe Flash, of course. Oh, and I hope you like Lotus Notes (insert evil laughter here).
Look, it's money. It's not something that impacts at other than a binary state. "Have" or "not have". Otherwise, why would you want to know about your finances?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"