Commentary

Mobile learning, particularly in Asia, is rapidly going mainstream. Research by Ambient Insight revealed that Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were the earliest adopters of mobile learning, accounting for 70% of the buying market in 2010. Yet other countries are catching up fast, with China, India and Indonesia expected to be the top purchasers by 2015.

The continuing digital sophistication of consumers in the financial services market has driven many of the developments in products, infrastructure and processes.

Asia Pacific has overtaken North America for the first time as the region with the highest number of high net worth individuals (HNWI), 3.37 million in 2011, according to the latest World Wealth Report, jointly published by RBC Wealth Management and Capgemini, and this figure is set on an upward trend. Welcome statistics for wealth managers. Saying that, this explosion in the HNWI segment can also present a thorny challenge for the industry.

The banking model is fatally flawed. It’s time to break up the universal banks, separate the cavalier commercial arm from the retail element, and educate the new generation of retail bankers.

Banks across Asia Pacific continue to wrestle with issues surrounding corporate actions processing. Changes to the distribution of event notifications – often still inconsistent and fraught with delays that increase risk and operational costs – have long been overdue. However due to the fragmented nature of the Asia Pacific region, creating a standardized approach to overcome these problems is a significant challenge.

After a disappointing 2012, India heads for an uncertain 2013. Here are five key challenges we would recommend the Indian economic authorities to focus on.

Today, bank compliance departments are under greater pressure than ever before. As the global economy struggles to recover, many banks are experiencing decreasing budgets and fewer resources dedicated to compliance functions.

Fitch Ratings’ outlook for Asia-Pacific (APAC) banks is a broad reflection of their ability to handle the risks of a less favourable external environment.

Ostensibly, the country's GDP per capita remains little change in the past twenty years and the banking industry hasn't change much either. It is difficult to envisage the future development of Taiwanese financial industry with hope. However, all banks are crazy for setting up branches , subsidiaries, or even leasing companies entering China market since 2012. It is an exchange term for allowing Bank of China and Bank of Communications to open branch in Taiwan. Among the targets of market in China are local Taiwanese companies ,joint ventures, and state-owned companies, especially to those companies moving to China in the past twenty years with direct financial support.

While private equity (PE) firms tend to be cautious and meticulous recruiters, rapidly growing players in Asia are willing to take a longer term view on hiring.

The financial globalization echo emotive gains primarily because of the deemed connectivity between highly fluid capital flows and the financial crises, that have become more pronounced in the past three decades.

Management guru late C.K. Prahalad defined Competing for future as ‘getting to the customer first for less.’ What are banks doing to get closer to their customers, especially the customers of tomorrow?

The macroeconomic downturn in 2012 has gradually shifted its influence from the real economy to the financial sector. The recently exposed problems regarding wealth management products sold by banks is only one of a number of possible hidden dangers and may be an early warning of the current financial risks.

Billions of transactions are made around the world everyday. Transaction banking may be the process of transferring from one place to another, but transaction banking is critical to any business in Singapore – and around the world.

Merchant acquiring and processing across Asia-Pacific is far from homogenous. It is a collection of quite unique markets.

Asia’s banking and finance sector is preparing for 2013 and all eyes are the region as a key barometer of the world’s economic fortunes.