Chris Cathcart's Wonga World

Google Finance goes screwy...again

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:41:51 PST

Google finance is no stranger to criticism. Its been highlighted for dodgy tickers, incorrect graphing, terrible delays to name just three.

Because of this, I doubt if today's issue will really affect many regular aficionado's of the markets.

Try this yourself, go to Google Finance, do you get the Chinese version? What a silly and needless mistakes.

Just proves that even the biggest, and those purported to be the best, get it terribly wrong sometimes.

EDIT: I just ran a wee check on www.google.com/finance/ it seems there's been a 301 redirect implemented to www.google.com.hk/finance/ - Curriouser and Curiouser!

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location: http://www.google.com.hk/finance

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:09:30 GMT

Expires: Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:09:30 GMT

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

Server: SFE/0.8

Cache-Control: public, max-age=2592000

Age: 62965

Content-Length: 0

X-XSS-Protection: 0

Connection: close

Is your twitter brand account suspended? Fix it easily.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:34:26 PDT

Image via Wikipedia

Once in a while I'll stumble upon something in the SM space that makes me just wonder. Earlier today I stumbled onto, what looks like, an HSBC Twitter account (See it here). Of course, anyone could have registered this and let it lapse. It appears to have been dead for quite some time.

Twitter has been around for a number of years now, although its only been the last year or so that we've seen its popularity jump. There was a period when brands, and squatters, were trying to grab large brand names left right and centre. Of course, Twitter were able to combat squatting by introducing Verified Accounts and creating a customer service process that allows brands to submit a Trademark Violation claim. The process is a simple one, and compared to other legal / compliance requirements sometimes required within a banks it should be pretty painless.

Simply put, there's pretty much no reason for a large brand to have their twitter name lying suspended. Here's hoping someone from HSBC will read this and move to resolve the issue.

How to sell UK insurance online

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:40:15 PST

There's been a bundle of new rules and regulations for insurers who advertise online drip feed out in 2009. Most of which have come as a part of the joint FSA / OFT review of online marketing practices in general.

The ABI (Association of British Insurers) has teamed up with Which?, BIBA (British Insurance Brokers Association) and a bundle of comparison and aggregation websites to create 17 page guide on how these sites can ensure a positive customer experience.

Other than a few bits and bobs from the FSA, comparison sites have remained relatively un-regulated in the UK marketplace. Of course they have to adhere to FSA standards, however there have never been any rules, or even suggested rules of conduct, around how information is presented to consumers to ensure clarity.

This has been exploited, with some comparison sites listing providers who have pay the most higher than those that are actually a better consumer deal. This is not in the best interests of the consumer and wholly in the best interest of the comparison site.

The new guidelines, called "Ensuring Positive Customer Experiences of Buying Insurance Online", is an attempt to create a level playing field amongst comparison sites whilst putting the best interests of the consumer at the centre.

I'm all for these sort of initiatives. Anything that makes things simpler and clearer for the consumer in financial services is a good thing in my book.

As these are only guidelines, theres no real requirement for websites to follow them. I'd like to see some hard and fast regulation of this nature. It's not rocket science and would go a long way to ensuring consumers get the policies they really want.

You can have a look at the guidelines on the ABI website

Thanks to Phil MacKechnie (@akcamiwik) for the twitter tip off.

Is friendly local banking on the return?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:29:49 PST

Who have thought that Christmas time would bring news other than how much money we all spent on boxing day? Well there's two news pieces that are worth posting about. Here's the first.

Have you ever heard of a chap called Vernon Hill? No, not the lucky fellow who's married to Tess Daly. Vernon Hill, you know, he's that banking tycoon from the states?

You'd be forgiven for not hearing about him. I hadn't either until the middle of this month.

Vernon Hill is an entrepreneur who has made his name through setting up a number of banking institutions. Not all have been huge, but all have been successful. He took Commerce Bank on when it only had 1 branch, and sold it years later to Canada's TD Bank when it had....470 branches. That's some success!

His is success is based on his differing approach to banking. He is famous for creating retail banking that relies on service rather than interest rates to attract customer.

His wikipedia entry say this is a "New Style" - I'd disagree, this is more old style (certainly in the UK anyway), back to the days when bank staff knew you by your first name and personal banking, was in fact, 'personal'.

It's just been announced that FSA has granted Mr Hill's new banking venture, called Metro Bank, a banking license. making metro Bank the first UK banking start up in over 100 years.

You can read more about it on FT.com - the piece that really stands out for me (as a Gadget and Dog lover) is "They will also have gadgets to entertain children and will encourage customers to bring in their dogs."

I hope they let us BIG kids to play with the gadgets too!

I think this is an interesting development in UK banking. It's clear that 2010 is going to be a year of more friendly, customer centric banks and banking facilities being created. Tesco Bank will do this, following the "Every Little Helps" mantra.

With the growth of social media, and consumer conversation being so prevalent, and indeed encouraged, online. Larger banking brands, that are seen to be stuffy, will really need to work hard to grow positive public perception.

Make no mistake, the online battle ground for this will be Social Media.

2010 Predictions from bigmouthmedia

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:09:43 PST

Every year we like to sit down and look at the predictions we made for 2009 and have a go at looking at whats 2010 holds in store for us.

I'm glad to say we were pretty much on the money with our predictions 2009.

Do you think we're doing well with our thoughts on 2010?

Bigmouthmedia's predictions for 2010

The Google Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:04:29 PST

Look at this:

That graph shows the share price over the last 5 days for the UK online property service, Rightmove. As you can see its took a bit of a hammering yesterday, dropping a substantial 60p in a day.

What you are seeing is The Google Effect.

So what happened? Well, rumours emerged that Google would be launching a property search service in the UK. They've been running it in Australia for the best part of a year, and its been very successful.

Rightmove charge £250 a month for estate agents to list their properties on the website, whilst, currently, Google property search is free in Australia.

You can understand the potential threat here can't you.

I wonder what the Google doubters are thinking now? It's clear to me that regardless of the Google price dropping by almost 50% during the harder times this year, that they are still the main threat to all online services. Their prowess for diversification is their key strategic strength.

Where is the innovation in PPC? Its here!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:46:24 PDT

Innovation in PPC these days is pretty rare. Sure there are new bid management tools coming out regularly, but these are really taking existing bid management strategies and tweaking them. In general, there has been no real innovation there.

By innovation, I'm talking about changes that will truly give clients a significant competitive edge. Something that will blow current PPC strategies wide open and allow the possibility for a number of real-time, more abstract, factors to be accounted for and change PPC ad's accordingly.

Here's a make believe example. The weather in the UK is unpredictable (this summer is a prime example of that!). Imagine if you could take the current weather, in a particular location, and change your ad copy accordingly. In real time. I'll say that again *ahem*, IN REAL TIME.

Perhaps your selling camping clothes and equipment, the weather in the lake district takes an unexpected turn for the worse. It would be prudent to ensure PPC exposure in that area is talking less about the latest North Face summer hiking gear and more about the latest North Face protective clothing. So, spend is decreased on the summer wear, and increased on the protective wear. You're capitalising on an opportunity that didn't exist 10 minutes ago.

Having such a tool would align your PPC ad's to ever changing external factors and ensure your money is spent where you're going to get the best return. In turn, your ads would be more targeted. Ultimately, ensuring a significant increase in response and conversion rates.

It's all about the R.O.I.

The bigmouthmedia boffins have been theorising and pondering over this conundrum for months, and I'm very proud to say that they have developed a system that does all of the above and more.

We call it FUSE.

Do you have an inventory based business? Want to show mow many products you have left in your WIGIG (When Its Gone Its Gone) promotion, or how much stock you have left of Christmas' next big thing? FUSE can do that.

Are you a finance client who deals in FOREX? FUSE can show the current (the here an now!) exchange rates for currencies in your ad copy. FUSE can change spend on your account when a rate falls in favour of a more preferable rate. meaning your still going to get the conversions.

We've been running FUSE quietly on a number of clients over the summer. In every case, spend was used more efficiently and conversions increased. It worked out that over a two week period we saw a typical increase of 38% in conversion rates for clients that used FUSE.

With FUSE it doesn't matter what elements or changes happen in your marketplace,or even the world. it makes everything an opportunity. Ensuring R.O.I. at all times.

That's a big difference from the norm. That's a game changer. That's proper innovation.

Playing with Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:56:11 PDT

Things have been pretty quiet around here. I've been away on annual leave and unfortunately Wonga World has been neglected slightly.

Anyway, I'm back now and raring to go.

One thing that happened while i was abroad was the preview launch of Google Wave. Google sent out 100,000 invites to allow a lucky few to access and play with a preview version of their new tool. I was very very lucky to be one of those who received an invite.

My first impressions are that it's a preview version, not even a beta I'd say. So when things don't work, its not because of a failing of a tool, just that its still pretty buggy. This wont last.

i have a few colleagues who had been invited to the preview too, so our first play was a collaborative conversation. We didn't do a huge amount other than use it as a fancy IM, where we talked to each other in parallel rather than the linear method all other IM's allow.

Being able to edit each others notes and comments is good, and I can see that this will be very useful if (when) its possible to edit documents with others.

Another feature of Wave is the ability to add any existing Google gadget into a Wave. With the tens of thousands of iGoogle gadgets available there's pretty much something for everyone. Additionally, Wave has its very own API that allows developers to create Wave specific extensions.

There are only a small amount of Wave specific extensions available in the preview, however it wont be long until there are many many more.

My favourite so far is the Maps extension, that allows Wave participants to collaboratively create a map, share directions, identify key landmarks on a Google map.

There's many more uses for Wave that I'm sure i haven't stumbled upon yet. I'm really looking forward to it opening up to the wider audience. It's a great tool, with a lot of potential. It also has a novelty factor (many users are selling invites to Wave on ebay. With some going for in excess of £10 each) just now, however this will grow to be an extremely well used and functional tool.

Like iGoogle, the open API will mean that expansion of the tool will be almost limitless too.

Google as an aggregator?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:27:41 PDT

The web is awash today with news about a lawsuit between the US based aggregation website LendingTree and one of its technology providers, Mortech.

It seems that Mortech may have entered into an agreement with Google to provide them with technology that will allow Google to provide users with similar aggregation services.

Last year in the UK we saw a test that was being run for secured loans. This was called Google Merchant Search. This was where the top PPC spot was replaced with a drop down of secured loan amounts. This then redirected you though a list of providers and their relative loan rates for the user to choose from.

As a test it was small, only 1 in every 1000 searchers got the option and in order to apply for teh loan teh user was prompted to enter in telephone details, a time to receive a call and there chosen provider called them back. Pretty backward for the big G really. Each provider who took part in teh test paid £20 per lead.

This sounds like a whole new beast however. This sounds like, should it ever take off and reach UK shores, that the likes of Moneysupermarket, Tesco Compare and Compare the Market could have some veruy serious competition.

Google certainly has a lot of weight to throw around!

"The end is nigh! And it's all good!"

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:41:08 PDT

I cannot tell you how happy I am to actually start reading some positive financial services news in the main stream press. Some FS based good news is long overdue.

So what's the news? Well, according to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) the current recession is "at an end".

Yes, that's a very brave statement.

The good news is that the survey numbers they have to back this up are significant, with it's Q3 Business Confidence Monitor (link to the report) showing Q3 2009 confidence recovering to levels we've not seen since Q3 2007.

These results also seem to be borne out by the FTSE today which, at the time of posting, was up by 1pc after closing 2pc up on Friday. Of course, the FTSE is most likely being buoyed by the recent economic recovery messages coming out of Asia and some European countries.

More good news, and some that's less reported on today, is the fact that ICAEW survey has highlighted a massive turn around in confidence in the 'Banking,Finance and Insurance' category which tops the table in confidence growth.

Here's what they have to say about the sectors improvement;

"The Q3 2009 BCM shows another marked improvement in confidence in the Banking, Finance & Insurance sector. The sector’s Confidence Index rose by a record 31.9 points, following a 30 point increase in Q2 as firms implemented strategies in response to the financial crisis. The sector is now the second most confident, in stark contrast to a year ago when confidence in the sector stood almost 12 points below the national average."

That's as positive a message you'll get on recovery.

So, as far as this survey is concerned, it does certainly appear that things are on the up.

Keep you fingers crossed.

Banks with Biiiig numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:47:43 PDT

Well, there are some big numbers floating around in the financial press today.

Barclays first half pre-tax profits were £2.984bn
HSBC's first half pre-tax profits were £5bn

I've read some articles that are using these numbers as an excuse to fly the "recession is receding" flag. Well, in short - it's not. Or at least, these figures are not an indication of recovery - quite the opposite actually.

Barclays
Barclays first half profits were tipped to be £3.5bn, so it missed that by £0.5bn. In actual fact, it only managed to make the £2.984bn because of the strong performance of Barclays Capital. Without BarCap doubling their profits to £1.046bn, the Barclays group numbers would have been much lower. Barclays UK retail banking pre-tax profit dropped a massive 61% to £268m. In addition, the commercial banking arm had profits drop 42% to £404m

HSBC
HSBC also saw a massive drop in pre-tax profits which are down 51% on last years £10.8bn, to £5bn. Again, it was the global banking arm of HSBC that helped the overall group profits, they had had the greates first half profits results they've ever had with a massive £6.3bn. Putting this in perspective, in 2008 the Global banking arm posted a little over £2.5bn in their first half results. The bad news for HSBC is they had to increase their bad debt allocation to almost £14bn, £4bn more than this time last year, an indication that people are still struggling.

On the bright side, most economists are starting to come off the fence and suggest that the "bottom of the cycle" is in sight. A possible indication of confidence returning is of course house prices appear to be on the rise, with numbers being up 3 months in a row.

Interesting times.

Online marketing hints and tips videos

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:55:33 PDT

I've talked before about how much i enjoy my job. It's awesome.

Every once in a while I get the opportunity to do some properly awesome things on behalf of bigmouthmedia.

The most recent of these was getting to film 3 or 4 videos for YourBusinessChannel giving some high level online marketing advice for business'.

We recently popped all the bigmouth ones onto our bigmouthmedia channel on YouTube. Please feel free to have a look and ping back any comments or questions

As a wee taster, I've embedded one of the ones done by Finlay Clark, bigmouth's Senior Retail Strategist, below.

Watch this space for updates on when we produce and upload some more!

Chris

Finance SEO + black-hat in the news again

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:25:22 PDT

Over the last couple of days there has been plenty of talk across larger SEO blogs about a large UK comparison website being penalised for techniques deemed as unscrupulous by Google.

Two well thought of blogs, Econsultancy and Insiders-View, both confirmed the news yesterday.

So whats happened here? Essentially, it looks like the comparison site has been offering free content to website owners in return for a contextual link back to the comparison site's key product pages.

Google doesn't like this, but why? It's most likely not the offer of free content they dislike, but the method that was used at facilitating the request. Such a mass link request campaign could be seen as an attempt to directly game the PageRank algorithm. The email requests don't offer a link in return, so ultimately any webmaster that agrees to provide a link is taking the risk and losing out here by sharing their sites PageRank without really getting anything back.

A short while ago Forrester Research and Matt Cutts had a discussion about a technique used called "Sponsored Conversations". This is where a blogger is offered a (usually) tangible gift, or money, to talk about a product, highlight its benefits, include a link and try and create some buzz.

In fact, there are some companies that actively encourage bloggers to register with them and will then field requests from commercial companies on their behalf.

Matt Cutts is very clear on this issue;
1) "Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines."
2) "..paid posts should not pass PageRank." - i.e. out going links should be fully nofollowed.

Could it be Google are seeing the request for a link in return for 'quality content' falls in the realms of "Sponsored Conversation"?

It's all too common (and easy) for online marketers within a tough marketplace (which finance undoubtedly is) to take their budgets and try and 'buy' something more tangible like inbound links.

However, Google has been very very clear where the boundaries for this are. Here's a few quotes from the Google's Matt Cutts and former Googler Vanessa Fox.

Vanessa said, as far back as 2006;
"You want other sites to link to you. So, guidelines about links may seem confusing. You want genuine links: another site owner thinks your content is useful and relevant and links to your site. You don't want links that are intended only for Googlebot. For instance, you don't want to pay for a program that spams your link all over the Internet. You don't want to participate in link schemes that require you to link to a bunch of sites you know nothing about in exchange for links on those sites. Do you have hidden links on your site? These are links that visitors can't see and are almost always intended only for search engine web-crawling robots. Think about links in terms of visitors: are the links meant to help them find more good content or are they only meant to attract Googlebot?"

Matt Cutts then re-iterated this a year later by defining the difference of 'paid links' and 'paid links that pass PageRank';
"As someone working on quality and relevance at Google, my bottom-line concern is clean and relevant search results on Google. As such, I care about paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings. I’m not worried about links that are paid but don’t affect search engines. So when I say “paid links” it’s pretty safe to add in your head “paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings.” "

So, paid links bought to increase SEO benefit for the purchasing website, simply, contravene Google guidelines, and carry the high risk that such a strategy obviously carries with it. As you can see from the first quote i've listed, these links must be no-followed.

It's pretty clear really isn't it?

UK Interest rates

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:13:01 PST

I can't believe its been a full month since i last posted. Things have been so busy around here that it truly seems like it was only yesterday since i last posted. Anyhoo, some fresh posts are on the horizon and i promise they won't be about Interest rates.

So - to keep this short - Are interest rates going to drop today?

Even though the majority of UK businesses, banks and general population don't want another cut. I'm going to say "YES" I think we'll see another rate cut.

Chris Cathcart's WongaWorld prediction: Rates will drop 0.5% to 1% today.

Chris out.

Another drop in UK interest rates?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:15:36 PST

This is a speedy blog post.

The BoE MPC are currently debating what they should do with UK interest rates. Last month we saw a drop to 2% - this is the lowest they've ever been.

This month, following some more drastic rate cuts in the US and Japan, I think we'll see another cut. If it happens, it'll be the lowest UK interest rates have been ever. Ever. In over 300 years, since The MPC's started!

So what are they going to drop too - hmmm, I'd think that we'll see another substantial drop. Not as much as a full point, which would take them to 1%. I'm going to go for half point drop, taking us to: Chris Cathcart Wonga World Prediction: to 1.5%.

I'll update this post in 15 minutes, post the announcement with the implications of the decision.

EDIT: Confirmed. Rates down to 1.5%, its certainly is interesting times!

Yippie-ki-yay Norwich Union!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:11:12 PST

In a glut of global marketing and centralisation, Aviva group, owners of UK based Norwich Union and Eire based Hibernian insurance companies annouced earlier in 2008 that they were ditching said brands in favour of the Aviva brand name.

This isn't so surprising, the insurace group is known under the Aviva brand in over 20 other countries already. In fact they have a current group marketing campaign with the simple tag line of "Building a global brand" This is clearly important to them.

Today, news has filtered out that they will be using a number of A-list celebrities to make Aviva a house hold name. Bruce Willis, Ringo Starr and Elle McPherson top the list of celbs that we'll see in the Aviva ads, airing in teh UK from Boxing day onwards. We'll also see them appearing online and offline. Supporting Bruce, Ringo and Elle are Dame Edna and everyones favourite Shock Rocker, Alice Cooper.

There's no denying that, with such a line up and the budget that must be supporting this, that the consumer recall rate (a metric often used to guage success of cross channel ad campaigns) is likely to be very high.

I'm looking forward to seeing the adverts on TV. Perhaps they'll each have to play a down beat insurance salesman, who's had just one to many doors shut in his face. Cue, uplifting music the appearance of a dirty vest (this would be especially good in Elles ad) and a lot of explosions. It would then culminate in the Aviva brand logo, rising from the flames with the Hollywood-esque voice over man saying:

"AVIVA - Building a global brand!"

Ok, ok - perhaps i'm getting carried away....but i bet people would remember their brand! Hah!

Time for Quantitative Easing?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:57:50 PST

Just days after the minutes of the UK's MPC were released, showing that they had considered a more aggressive Interest Rate cut, there's now renewed speculation that rates may be heading towards 0% in the coming months.

I predicted in my last interest rates post that we'd see a droop to 2.5% by end of January - My prediction was exceed last month (I'll take that as a correct prediction :-D ) and also that we'd be sub 1% before the end of 2009.

Chris Cathcart's Wonga World Prediction Alert: I honestly think that it will happen before the end of February now!

The US has recently taken such a move, and speculation is high that Japan will follow suit. With sterling's fall continuing against the euro and the dollar, its quite likely the UK will seriously consider this move in there next MPC meeting.

This strategy is often seen as a pre-cursor to "Quantitative Easing". The Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan have both used this a method of saving their economy in the past. It's simple when a countries central bank takes the decision to start printing new money. This increases circulation and supply of money to banks.

'Quantitative' means the amount of money in supply; 'Easing' just means providing more.

This, of course has the knock on effect of making the banks feel a tad more flush than they are now, and makes them more comfortable in lending money, lending criteria is relaxed, and Joe Bloggs has a better chance of having his loan approved.

This has the further knock on effect of making Joe Bloggs feel a tad more flushed, starts to spend more money. Therefore, helping increase the overall circulation of cash and restore some confidence in the countries economy.

Its a drastic measure, but is often very successful at helping to kick start an economies healing process.

There you go - a five minute blog post on Quantitative Easing.

FSA: Egg plc's P.P.I. (Payment Protection Insurance) Failings

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:11:19 PST

A wee while ago the UK Financial Ombudsman raised an issue with the F.S.A. around the sale of P.P.I. (payment protection insurance) by mainstream lenders.

The issue was simply that the P.P.I. was being mis-sold by lenders, and that consumers were either a) being unfairly coerced in buying it and b) were not being given enough information about what it was and the limitations their P.P.I. policy would have.

P.P.I. was often sold, not as an add-on to the product the customer was applying, but almost as a prerequisite to it, and depending on the policy, P.P.I. can be quite expensive.

When the F.S.A. got involved initially, one of there first suggestions was they may impose a requirement for lenders to provide a simple table of benefits of P.P.I., they felt this would make it very easy for consumers to decide if they wanted the product, and it would also highlight the product as an add-on.

However, a few years ago, the F.S.A. implemented a similar "summery box" for lenders, which consumer feedback has shown, really doesn't give much further insight into the intricacies of the lending product they might be interested in.

Following some time of evaluation, the usual threat of name, shame and fine. Today we hear that they have indeed moved on this threat and picked a big F.S. name to do so.

Egg plc (owned by Citibank) have been fined a substantial £721,000 for "breaches of Principles 3 and 6 of the F.S.A.’s Principles for Businesses". You can read the full F.S.A. Final Notice to Egg here.

Principle 3 = "A firm must organise and control its affairs effectively."
Principle 6 = "A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly."

In Egg's case these are two hefty charges. Of course these are the headline principles. The detail is in the F.S.A. Principles of Business if you're interested in reading it.

In short, the press release breaks it down nicely:

"Egg sold P.P.I. either when receiving a customer services call, or when making a sales call to a new customer. When Egg customers said they did not want P.P.I. on their credit cards, the firm directed its sales staff to use techniques to persuade the customer to take the insurance - called 'objection handling'.

These techniques included over-emphasising the positive features of the P.P.I., or telling the customer they could take the P.P.I. for a free period and cancel it later if they did not want it. In some cases, even when the customer did not consent, P.P.I. was applied to their credit card anyway.

In addition, in a significant number of cases Egg failed to obtain clear consent from customers to receive only limited information about the P.P.I. during the telephone sale."

I was happy to hear that P.P.I. was being investigated, its been a cash-cow for lenders for far too long, at the consumers expense. As a product, there is a place for it in today's marketplace, there's no doubt about that however the way it was sold and marketed was, in most cases, simply unfair.

I've heard on the grape vine that there is potential for the next F.S.A. move would be to instruct lenders to extract P.P.I. as an option from within application form, where it is found almost 100% of the time, and start selling it as a simple stand a lone product.

Not only with this make it easier for consumers to see that its an add-on product, it will also level the playing field some-what. There's actually a lot of small insurance firms out there that sell P.P.I. at hugely competitive rates and with better terms.

F.S.A. well done.

(F.S.A. Egg plc PR is here)

Yahoo! A year of Search: The Undertaker and Britney trounce Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:00:41 PST

Yahoo! today launched their annual Year of Search Review. The major search engines each do this these days, and I'm constantly suprised by the results. As a zeigeist on the world, it can be a little worrying sometimes (or is it just me?).

Yahoo!'s top 10 search topics look like this:

Britney Spears
WWE
Barak Obama
Miley Cyrus
RuneScape
Jessica Alba
Naruto
Lindsay Lohan
Angelina Jolie
American Idol

First off, i'm suprised the Obama came in at 3rd, behind the WWE and Britney. After all, Obama had over 2 years of campaigning and his online marketing spend has been reported at being in excess of $8M! A very substantial amount.

Do you think this list shows a younger demographic of users for Yahoo!?

I'm looking forward to comparing this with Google's Zeitgeist for 2008. Will there be any noticable difference?

Mark fishers Lloyds TSB move

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:29:41 PST

Last year I blogged about Mark fisher being made CEO of ABN Amro. At the time i said I thought it was great move, I still think that, though his hands were relatively tied while he was there so we there hasn't been many positive news worthy moments to come out of his time there.

Of course, that whole acquisition has been marred publicly by high profile critics. A lot.

At the beginning of November it was announced that Mark would be moving from the trouble stricken RBS to Lloyds TSB to oversee the HBOS integration. This is a brilliant move by Lloyds, and in my mind they couldn't have chosen a better, more skilled man for the job.

Mark worked for Natwest when RBS started their David and Goliath hostile take over. He was tasked with leading the team to counter the RBS offer. As we all know, RBS succeeded in their take over bid and Natwest became a part of the RBS Group.

Mark so impressed Fred Goodwin, that Fred approached Mark to join the RBS team and lead the Natwest integration.

I was at RBS at the time of this integration and it was nothing short of massive, and sometimes, painful. However the integration, that lasted a good 2 year, went well and was a complete success.

I would expect nothing less of the integration of HBOS with Lloyds. They have one of the few people around who can make this a full success at the helm.

In the words of Eric Daniels, "I am delighted Mark is joining us; he has a deep expertise in banking and his proven track record in dealing with highly complex integration activity will be a great asset to the new Lloyds Banking Group."

I couldn't agree more.

Interest rates? Lead Zepplins!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:17:49 PST

One of the major pieces of finance news that happened while i was on my hiatus was the Bank of England dropping UK Interest rates by an unprecedented 1.5%, down to 3%.

Those who were remaining stubborn, and denied the UK was entering an actual recession (as opposed to a defined recession), surely agree that that's exactly where we are. The MPC simply don't drop rates 1.5% on a whim!

The minutes from the last MPC have been released today, and we can now see that all nine MPC members agreed unanimously that the drop was the right thing. In fact, it appears that there was some further debate around whether 1.5% was a big enough drop. With the committee being minuted as actually looking as big a drop of 2%! I guess they wanted the defibrillator at 3/4's rather than full.

Thats big news, and a lot can be read in to it - my thoughts are that the MPC felt that it would be much of a shock for the UK economy for the drop to happen.

Chris Cathcart's Wonga World Prediction 1: Ok, this is a safe one (I think) - We'll see another rate drop to 2.5% before the end of January.

It was only 6 months ago that Deloittes (and Capital Economics) Roger Bootle suggested that rates would drop to 2% by the end of 2009. It now looks like this is going to be even more aggressive. in fact Capital Economics have today predicted an interest rate drop to 1% by end of 2009.

Chris Cathcart's Wonga World Prediction 2: Going out on a limb here - I'd expect the rates to drop to sub 1% by the end of 2009, in order to combat the currently out of control CPI inflation.

Actually, I hope I'm wrong on my 2nd prediction. I'd much rather see the economy healing quicker, so we didn't need to drop interest rates so low.

"Tell" google what you want

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:28:08 PST

I've blogged about the fact that I'm an iPhone user. That I think its a great piece of tech and that I love the apps that you can install on it.

It's safe to say that every iPhone out there is going to provide a completely new functional experience. This is down to the how customisable the apps make the handset, even more so if your brave enough to "jailbreak" the handset.

I now have 4 "pages" of apps on my iPhone, and I love almost all of them. My top 3 apps are:

BookReader - a simple eBook reader that just works. Its brilliant.
Smule Ocarina - turns my iPhone into a musical instrument (Smule also make Sonic Lighter and Sonic Boom - both of which are great fun)
Google Mobile App - My newest app, and newest favourite.

The Google mobile app is another simple tool from Google. It allows me to search, use Google Apps and get access to most of the other google tools. However, having access to these through an App is not why i like it so much. After all, i can access all these through Safari should i want too.

This app now has Voice Search. Yup, thats right, I can now lift my iPhone to my ear and ask it a question, the app encodes my voice, pings it off to Google servers where it translates it and returns a response. Its a very understated, but technically clever piece of technology. And the geek in me loves it!

I'm actually surprised that this made it onto the iPhone before the G1, the first handset to run Android, Google mobile operating system. As with most things Google, it actually works quite well. It does warn you that it works best in you have a North American accent, however it seemed to manage fine with my Scottish drawl.

Of course, Google launched Local Voice Search State-side at least 18 months ago, where you call a 1-800 number and do 'speak' your local search query. This has most likely been the backbone of this new iPhone addition, allowing 18+ months of testing to iron out the creases.

However, this opens a a plethora of potential doors of where mobile search might move too. Yahoo! are by far the 'owners' of mobile search just now, however if developments like this continue, then Google really wont be far behind them!

Back!! And Blogging!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:29:09 PST

If you were a regular reader of this blog I'm sure you'll have noticed that its been quite a substantial length of time since i last posted.

Without going into too much detail, i've been a little ill of late, however after a few doc appointments and sessions I'm just about home dry.

There is so much that's happened in teh online world, and also the finance world (in case you haven't noticed). So i have quite a bit to catch up with, hope you've got your reading glasses at the ready!

Before i sign out and I want to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone at bigmouthmedia for their patience and best wishes. In particular a big(mouth) "Thank You!" to my boss and UK MD - Lyndsay Menzies, our Head of HR - Nicola McGouldrick, our Head of Operations - Steven Mallon and lastly my fellow Strategists Anneli and Finlay for covering my SMX London and Adtech London speaking slots. They've all been massive supports!

Ok - lets get blogging!

$30M in 30 days - Saying hello to Micro-payments?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:26:27 PST

Despite all the be-moaning that surrounds the internet about Apple and its latest iPhone. You have to admit they must be doing something right.

Steve Job's (you might have heard of him) announced this week that in Apples AppStore had made a massive £30M in 30 days. $1M a day through a relatively small and insignificant area of their behemoth business. Wow.

This is very interesting news. App Store is, in essence, a paid for version of Google's gadget directory and is surely proof that 'empowering the user' is the cash-cow of the day, and to think, Steve wasn't even going to open the iPhone API up for fear of hacking and unlocking (he needn't have worried, that was inevitable).

Most of the apps you can buy from AppStore range in price, from £0.50 to as much as £999 (a one off app that is now removed from the store)! There are a plethora of free apps, however the majority of them cost in the region of £1.20 - less than the price of a cup of coffee or a supermarket sandwich.

Now this got me thinking about Micro-payments. Of course, what Apple is doing is not really micropayments - far from it actually. However, i believe that what is happening is, on a psychological level, users will now start to become used to paying pittance for an online purchase.

The thought of paying 50p for an app really doesn't throw anyone. It's such a small amount that we're willing to pay it without too much consideration about it breaking the bank.

This is the thought process that providers need users to adopt, and become the norm, if micro-payments are to become successful.

Of course, online ringtone providers have been trying this for years, however they just don't have the same 'cut-through' and high profile as Apple do.

Andrew Girdwood, a fellow bigmouth, has been evangelising about micro-payments for a long time.

The ivy-league banks still don't really have the infrastructure to be able to cope with them. So providers are having to be creative. I've seen one micro-payment solution that means you have to stock up an account with cash before you use that reserve to purchase your goods. Again, not the true sense of micro-payments, but a good way to allow providers to introduce the idea of micro-payments to consumers.

It is the way the online payments are going to go. It has too. $30M in 30 days is a true show of how profitable a system like this can really be.

I'd be interested to see how Google are going to respond to AppStore with the release of the first Android based phone. They brought the idea of an apps (Gadgets) directory and open API's to the masses.

I'm sure a company who prides its self in becoming a billion dollar company "..1 cent at a time" will have something innovative up their sleeve and i hope it uses micro-payments.

In short, its a win-win, consumers get affordable and (mostly) quality apps, they get mega-bucks! Who's to argue!

ps- this post has been written on the train to London and has been relatively painless!

Follow Up: My O2 and buying an iPhone experience

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Cathcart) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:29:03 PDT

Just a short update to my previous post.

I bit the bullet and decided to go queue for an iPhone this morning. I didn't want to hang around too much so i decided to get there at 7:30 (I'm up early everyday anyway feeding and walking my many animals). Surprisingly - i was first in line at my local O2 store, with a large queue forming about 5 minutes after I arrived.

I wanted a 16GB iPhone and knew they only had a small amount. I was one of the lucky 2 people who actually got the 16GB model.

No the point of this post is to tell you all about the shambles that was the signing up process of a new O2 customer.

Guess what, all their internal systems went down due to demand (they have an secure online based ordering and vetting system). The staff were in panic, telling each other " We have to go to Contingency" - basically they had to down mice and PC and start calling the details through.

No problem from a customer point of view - it's usually done quickly and you still get your handset and new deal.

However, this morning was different, very different. The call handlers were overloaded too. So everyone was on hold for in excess of 30 minutes. THEN - news filtered through that the call handling center had also gone into "Contingency" - meaning their central systems had buckled under the load too! Sheesh!

I'm really really surprised about this - especially after the issues O2 experienced on Monday. I mean, they can't use the excuse that they were aware that demand was going to be so high this time can they!

In the end the store staff, who were embarrassed and very apologetic, took all my details, photo copies of ID's, let me pa for the handset and then said that they'd process everything later in the day once it calms down.

I must say that the staff were great and dealt well with what was, in essence, a poorly planned situation.

O2, next time think about staggering opening / sales time so that you can at least manage with demand and ensure a clean and smooth customer experience.