The recent Barcampbank in Paris was very well attended with an energized crowd mainly from Paris but also a few participants from other countries such as the UK or Germany. Two members of the 'Open Bank Project' team came all the way from Berlin to talk us through their game changing concept of universal banking API to drive transparency in financial services and fight corruption.
I invite you to watch my video with the man who came up with the idea.
La semaine derniere, je me suis deplace a Paris pour contribuer a la 7eme edition du BarCampBank Paris ou j'ai passe une excellente journee avec pres d'une centaine de passiones de l'innovation bancaire.
A l'occasion de ce deplacement parisien, j'ai filme quelques interviews au Credit Agricole (CAStore et SDK) a la Societe Generale (iPad, twitter), et avec quelques startups innovantes au BarCamp, dont SPEAR.fr.
Si vous etes lecteur regulier du blog Visible Banking, vous comprendrez tout de suite ma comparaison de cette nouvelle plateforme a Caja Navarra (maintenant membre foundateur du groupe 'Banca Civica') l'une des banques les plus transparentes au monde...
In the last couple of years, many P2P lending companies had to shut down temporarily due to pressure from the regulator. It happened to the leading online communities in the US, Prosper.com and LendingClub, and to the pioneers in social lending this side of the pond too.
FriendsClear.com, the French P2P lending community started a 'quiet period' back in April 2011. Yesterday, after nine months of hard work behind close doors, they are open for business again.
I invite you to watch my video interview with FirendsClear.com's Co-Founder and CEO.
As mentioned in a previous article, I was in Paris on Saturday to participate to the 7th edition of the BarCampBank Paris. The event was extremely well attended with over 80 energized participants, all willing to engage in (occasionally heated) conversations on the broad topic of innovation in banking.
A big thank you to the organizers for putting together such a successful 'un-conference': Christophe Ducamp (la Maison Ducamp), Kristell Le Nadan (Pole Finance Innovation), Emmanuel Papadacci (Credit Agricole) and Nicolas Debock (XAnge). I hope I am not forgetting anyone.
Now, I invite you to check my coverage of the event which includes about 60 pictures and video interviews.
Last November I was deligthed to accept Jesus Perez's invitation to contribute to the second edition of his BarCampBank Madrid. I had a great time catching up with my readers and fellow supporters of innovation and social media in the banking industry.
BBVA, a Leader in Social Media BBVA is one of the most engaging and innovative financial institutions online with 10+ initiatives in the social media space, and still counting: from their twitter accounts (BBVA , BBVA_Press or Compass just to name a few), their innovation blog planta29, their virtual career fair, their annual Open Talent contest, their strategic investment in Strands one of the leading PFM solution providers, to their own online communities Tu Cuentas and Actibva focused on helping Spanish people to make better financial decisions and better manage their money.
BBVA Hires Experienced Internet Leaders BBVA understood that it was important to bring new blood to the
organization, people with a fresh approach and a deep understanding of
the online world. Most banks aim to become online the equivalent of the Amazon or the Apple of the banking industry. But they need help from outside their organization. In
the last couple of years, BBVA recruited a fair number of digital pros from leading online
companies such as eBay and Google to join their innovation and online community teams. Brilliant move.
At BarCampBank Madrid, I had the pleasure to eventually meet one of my most enthusiastic supporters, Jose Antonio Gallego, a former category then community manager at eBay.es.
Jose works closely with the Innovation team to identify and deliver new ways to better engage with their community online in order to achieve various goals such as to increase BBVA's share of voice, change brand perception, or drive both customer acquisition and customer retention. The Senior Management is committed and the Innovation team is influential. Very exciting job.
The Actibva Community Jose is involved on many projects, but especially on Actibva, the award winning online community launched by BBVA in 2008 (powered by Strands), to
offer all the relevant information on finance and economics to its
users. Please find more info on Actibva at the end of my post.
My Interview with Jose Antonio I invite you to watch one of my very best video interviews so far. Ladies and gentlemen, Jose Antonio Gallego!
Visible Banking Views I always urge my clients and my readers to start where it makes sense
and don't spend a lot of money upfront: leverage free online services
like twitter or blogs, tap into existing sizable trusted communities
like facebook, start focusing on a soft topic or initiative like charity
work or sport sponsoring, or engaging with your clients on twitter. Social Media = Live and learn.
BBVA has been one of the most active large banks in social media. Over the last couple of years, they have increased their presence on most of the social media channels and services available out there.
I love the fact that the Senior Management Team understand the importance of social media and see it as strategic: hiring digital pros from eBay and Google, giving Innovation the required budget and level of influence to make things happen, launching online communities focused on finance and budgeting. This is very uncommon in the banking industry.
Launching your own online community is one of the boldest moves in social media. it requires a larger budget (which goes with higher expectations) and more resources. It is challenging to reach a critical mass of registered users, not mentioning active ones.
BBVA's approach to online commnunities is spot on: * Technology: don't reinvent the wheel, white label a platform from a leading solution provider * Focus on engaging the community - Internal Community Manager: the platform is not important, your ability to convince of the value of the platform and engage with your members is the key to success. Hire a community manager, don't outsource this important function. * Think LT: it will take a lot of time and effort to build an online community from scratch. You need to be realistic in terms of targets, and give you enough time to succeed. * Exit Strategy - Respect your members: think about your exit strategy, just in case your community doesn't take off. You must respect the time your members spent contributing and building their network of contacts. Don't do a Join2Grow by Fortis, a Slingshot by Capital One or a Ideablob by Advanta which all got terminated in the last 12 months for different reasons. More on Jose Antonio and Actibva Actibva on Twitter: on-demand market info + proactive following
strategy On 20th November, I received an email from Jose
Antonio informing me of a new application launched by
BBVA to provide Spanish
investors on twitter with on-demand real-time market information on
Spanish stock prices, foreign exchange, commodity prices and the indexes
of the most relevant markets in the world.
I invite you to read the
official announcement of the
launch of this app on the ActiBva blog. Jose confirmed the idea for this service came as much from the feedback from the
community as the desire from the ActiBva team to better serve the
Spanish investors in an innovative way.
They also implemented an
automated following process based on a thorough monitoring of Spanish
tweeps covering 20ish key words relevant to the Actibva community.
Their
following strategy had a positive impact on their growth rate (+240% between Nov09-Feb010) and last
month they broke the 1k follower mark and became one of the #85 twitter
accounts globally with over 1k followers and #2 in Spain as mentioned in
my Visible Banking Twitter
Watch #17. Following people is a good way to drive your follower
base up the roof, but I recommend to do it wisely. In that case, I would
be keen to analyze their follower base to assess "the quality" of
their contacts and help BBVA take their twitter strategy to the next
level.
Video Introduction to Actibva I invite you to watch a YouTube video with J.A. introducing Actibva back in May 2008.
ActiBva brings together newspapers headlines, blogger reviews,
stock market information, and simulators for mortgages, loans and other
financial products. In case you missed it, Forrester flagged ActiBva on their prestigious Groundswell radar in June 2009.
Stats for the month of November 09: Actibva had over
100k
unique users, 210k page views, 140k visits, and over 2100 registered users.
BBVA Social Media Slides Please find below the presentation
Jose
Antonio delivered at the Banking Innovation Day organized by Microsoft
on 19th
November (found on the
innovacionenbanca.com blog)
A bit like the brilliant Finovate events in San Francisco and NYC, attending BarCampBank in Madrid is a great way to find out all about the most innovative initiatives and services in the Spanish banking industry, and network with all the thought leaders from the industry, in just one day.
I invite you to check the wiki for more info on the agenda and the full list of participants.
Live coverage on twitter, facebook and Visible Banking I plan to cover the event live on twitter and publish the most interesting tweets on this post. I will also take a few pictures and publish them on the Visible Banking Facebook Page, on twitter via twitpic, on this post via slide.com.
afi_innovacion: @Visible_Banking Today is an intensive Spanish course for you! I hope that you understand what people at #bcbm2 are saying... Indeed it was!;)
New Twitter List - BarCampBankMadrid2 I am not sure you checked my list of tweeple at Finovate 09 in NYC. I thought it would be a good idea to adopt a similar approach for this BarCampBank in Madrid.
I invite you to follow the new twitter list I created BarCampBankMadrid2.
Pictures Please find below the photos I shot during the event.
Interviews I will keep you updated on the videos I shot today. I scheduled a few interviews with BBVA, financialred, Caja Navarra, Banco Sabadell... Stay tuned!
I shot three other interviews with: * Fernando Egido, Digital Business Director at Caja Navarra * Jesus Perez, CEO at financialred.com * Paco Alvarez & David, CECA
My presentation Please find below the link to the presentation I delivered in Madrid.
1st BarCampBank Madrid on February 2009 I invite you to watch the following video shot at the 1st BarCampBank in Madrid. Jesus explain (in Spanish) the concept behind the BarCampBank.
“Christophe's book is really the must-have synopsis of the current state-of-play in social media in banking. Christophe has taken a deep passion for the topic, and turned it into an account of the landscape valuable to anyone who has social media responsibilities in financial services” James Gardner, General Manager at Spigit
“Christophe is extremely well informed about the banking and financial services industries. He's at all the right conferences, and digs deep with his interviews of all the influencers and innovators. He's also a tremendously nice guy :-)” Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO at Mint Software
“Christophe seems to have his finger on the pulse of the financial services industry. Visible Banking has become "the" source of information for innovations in the financial services industry.” Tim Collins, SVP-Experiential Marketing at Wells Fargo
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