News

• NAB: Tech investment paying off

  The National Australia Bank (NAB) has again moved to reassure shareholders that its investment in its Next Generation Banking IT platform (NGP) is paying off.

• Technical problems disrupt Euronext trading in Amsterdam

  Online trading in options and futures at NYSE Euronext in Amsterdam was disrupted for hours on Monday morning due to unspecified "technical problems," the stock exchange said.

• ZestCash claims bringing big data to consumer lending will revolutionize the industry

  ZestCash, an online lending service for lower-income borrowers, has begun using a new big data-driven decision-making method that it claims will allow it to lend to 25 percent more people and improve repayment rates by 20 percent.

• EU investigates UK mobile payments plan

  Europe's competition watchdog has opened an in-depth investigation into plans by three telecommunications companies to create a joint "mobile wallet" venture in the U.K.

• Japanese ATMs to use palm readers in place of cash cards

  A Japanese bank will introduce ATMs that use palm scanners in place of cash cards, it said Wednesday.

• Are community Cloud services the next hot thing?

  When Mathew Lodge, senior director of Cloud services for VMware, looks out over the Cloud landscape and envisions how it will continue to evolve, he sees community Clouds playing a big role. And he's not the only one.

• Are community cloud services the next hot thing?

  When Matthew Lodge, senior director of cloud services for VMware, looks out over the cloud landscape and envisions how it will continue to evolve, he sees community clouds playing a big role. And he's not the only one.

• TD Bank Unites 85,000-plus Workers

  Built via a slew of mergers and acquisitions, TD Bank Group in recent years had seen its employees lose the ability to easily collaborate with one another as its workforce grew rapidly across the United States and Canada.

• The Grill: Catherine P. Bessant

  Two years ago, Catherine P. Bessant was tapped to lead Bank of America's Global Technology and Operations (GT&O) group, which has more than 100,000 staffers and contractors in 40 countries. Here Bessant talks about leading a tech group that includes five CIOs as direct reports, the importance of employee diversity, and how relying too much on third parties for IT services can backfire.

• How to protect online transactions

  The trusty telephone is emerging as one of the key elements in new multifactor authentication schemes designed to protect online banking and other web-based financial transactions from rapidly evolving security threats.

• Researcher traces 'Gameover' malware to maker of Zeus

  The "Gameover" malware that the FBI warned users about earlier this month is a preview of the next version of the even-more-notorious Zeus money-stealing Trojan, a security researcher said today.

• ASIC ups its market surveillance

  The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) is looking to make significant changes to the ICT underpinning its white collar crime fighting abilities in response to faster trading speeds and high trading volumes.

• IBM announces tech deals with five African banks

  IBM Wednesday announced the signing of five strategic agreements in the Kenyan financial services sector, which it said are another example of the growing wave of innovation in African banking.

• Westpac moves IT to the back office

  Westpac is to carry out an organisational reshuffle which will see its IT department move from the forefront to the backseat of the organisation.

• Getting a handle on complexity

  Everyone knows complexity is a foe of IT. But how bad is it, and how do you tell if your decisions are making it better or worse? Peter Leukert, CIO of Commerzbank, one of the largest banks in Germany, set to find out. Leukert, who runs the financial service giant's 3,800 member centralized IT group, built an IT Complexity Model to get a handle on the problem, and then turned to consulting firm Capco Partners to help get other financial service firms involved. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up with Leukert and Mat Small, Partner with Capco in New York, for a briefing on the effort.