Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Electronic banking (hereafter referred to as digital banking), has not been fully embraced by local South Africans, in comparison to larger more established banking industries of the world. Despite the research literature available on e-commerce, much is still unknown about digital banking drivers in developing countries such as South Africa. In particular how clients feel about this form of banking and what the strategic challenges that require resolution for local consumers and banks to both benefit from this symbiotic relationship. Arguably, digital channels are the future of banking globally as the autocatalytic nature of the internet and mobile devices continue to fuel digital transformation. In order for local banks to leverage this area of technological evolution, customer perceptions about this service platform, particularly the areas that were targeted for this investigation need to be prudently considered from a customer perspective for future corrective measures that need to be undertaken and ultimately solve for customer satisfaction. Many South Africans have been early adopters of digital banking services, however many are still wary of this form of banking. A “magic pill” for implementation was not sought after, but rather a learning approach to embrace the opinions and perceptions of consumers.

M.Comm. / Since the creation of private banking in the 16th century, it has evolved from a discreet service for the wealthy few to a broader base of services provided for high net worth individuals. Private banking today offers a complex, highly diverse array of personalised wealth preservation, -creation and —management services for a growing population of sophisticated and affluent individuals. Such people have multiple needs that range from banking services to investment and estate planning. The high net worth market is one of the most promising areas for banks to generate revenues and fee income. It is therefore not surprising that private banking is one of the highest growth services in the banking industry today. Private banking is not a business for everyone, however. Not all providers have the client base, the service background and product range, the market location, the management culture or the shareholder commitment to succeed. A myriad of service providers are entering the South African market, ranging from trust companies, investment banks, retail banks, stock brokers, treasury operations and foreign players. All these players brand themselves as deliverers of private banking (in the case of licensed banks) or private client (in the case of non-banks) services. A result of the diversity of institutions claiming to be private banks or at the very least deliverers of private client services, is that not only do the products available to clients differ substantially from institution to institution, but also the service delivery mechanism. True private banking is about relationships and the management of those relationships. Almost any service can be delivered but there is always a cost attached to the delivery thereof. The secret to success in the South African private banking market is the balancing of the costs and the level of service delivery to the appropriate target market. At present there are no standard entry criteria and service delivery model to guide institutions that wish to enter the private banking arena. The existing private banks are so diverse in nature that an independent study was necessary to find the common denominators that underpin a successful private bank in South Africa. Private banking in Europe, although not restricted to Switzerland and the United Kingdom, is largely concentrated in these two countries. Private bankers, particularly in Europe, have traditionally focused on "old wealth" or "passive wealth", which is concerned primarily with secrecy, capital preservation, personal service and relationship longevity. Old wealth has tended to be relatively price insensitive. There are two main European private banking styles, dubbed the Zurich and London models.

Lai Tat-chiu. / Summary in Chinese. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: leaves 138-141.

by Young Yee-hoi [and] Hong Man-kui. / Title in Chinese. / Abstract also in Chinese. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Bibliography: leaves 169-171.

Electronic banking (hereafter referred to as digital banking), has not been fully embraced by local South Africans, in comparison to larger more established banking industries of the world. Despite the research literature available on e-commerce, much is still unknown about digital banking drivers in developing countries such as South Africa. In particular how clients feel about this form of banking and what the strategic challenges that require resolution for local consumers and banks to both benefit from this symbiotic relationship. Arguably, digital channels are the future of banking globally as the autocatalytic nature of the internet and mobile devices continue to fuel digital transformation. In order for local banks to leverage this area of technological evolution, customer perceptions about this service platform, particularly the areas that were targeted for this investigation need to be prudently considered from a customer perspective for future corrective measures that need to be undertaken and ultimately solve for customer satisfaction. Many South Africans have been early adopters of digital banking services, however many are still wary of this form of banking. A “magic pill” for implementation was not sought after, but rather a learning approach to embrace the opinions and perceptions of consumers.

This thesis argues that one type of multinational entity – the multinational bank – poses particularly significant challenges to the international tax regime in terms of its current profit allocation rules. Multinational banks are a unique subset of multinational entities, and as a consequence of their unique traits, the traditional international tax regime foes not yield an optimal interjurisdictional allocation of taxing rights. The opportunity for tax minimisation, achievable because of the unique traits, and realised through exploitation of the traditional source and transfer pricing regime, results in a jurisdictional distribution of taxing rights which does not reflect economic reality. There are two distinct ways in which the traditional international tax regime fails to reflect economic activity. The first way that economic activity may not be reflected in the distribution of the taxing rights to income from multinational banking is through the application of traditional source rules. The traditional sources rules allocate income where transactions are completed rather than where the intermediation services are arranged. As a result of their unique commercial role as financial intermediaries, by separating intermediary economic activity from legal transactions with third parties, multinational banks may distort the true location of the activity giving rise to income. The second way in which the traditional tax regime may fail to reflect economic activity is through the traditional transfer pricing regime requiring related or internal transaction to be undertaken at an arm’s length price. The arm’s length pricing requirement is theoretically deficient in its failure to recognise the highly integrated nature of multinational banking. In practice, the arm’s length pricing requirement is also difficult, if not impossible, to apply to multinational banks because of the requirement of comparability. The difficulties associated with the current model have resulted in a subtle move by multinational banks towards global formulary apportionment. This thesis concludes that, for the international taxation of multinational banks, the current source regime should be replaced with a system that allocates profits for tax purposes on the basis of income source, with source determined using a unitary taxation or global formulary apportionment system. It is argued that global formulary apportionment is a theoretically superior model that provides both jurisdiction to tax and allocated profits on the basis of the economic activity that generates the income.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-158). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-158). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The exponential growth of the Internet is changing the way corporations conduct business with customers. The banking industry is no exception. In order to sustain competitiveness, banks have been introducing more Internet banking services. However, this change undermines the ability of business to retain their customers since certain characteristics of the Internet can cause a reduction in customers' search costs, reduce barrier to entry, and diminish distinctiveness of a firm (Kalakota and Whinston, 1996). Managing effective customer retention strategies is increasingly important in the banking industry since the length in years of customer relationships is one of the most important factors that contributes to the bank's profitability. Reicheld (1996) found that a five percent increase in customer loyalty produces an eighty-five percent increase in profitability in the banking industry. In the past, the key to understanding the power of a corporation to retain customers was thought to lie in the measurement of customer satisfaction. Clarke (2001) argued that long-term customer retention in competitive requires firms to go beyond mere basic satisfaction and to look for ways of establishing ties of loyalty that will help ward off competitive attack. While customer satisfaction may be one important driver of customer retention, switching costs are also likely to influence customer retention, both independently and in tandem. For example, the presence of switching costs can mean that some seemingly retained customers are actually dissatisfied but do not defect because of high switching costs. Thus the level of switching costs has a moderating effect on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer retention. While the moderating role of switching costs on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer retention has been supported in literature for existing non-Internet contexts (Lee et al., 2001; Ranaweera and Prabhu, 2003), little research has been published within the Internet context and particularly Internet banking. Based on a review of the literature, a theoretical model linking customer satisfaction and switching costs to customer retention was developed. The model has two main features. First, it examines the main direct effects of customer satisfaction and switching costs on customer retention. Second, the model examines the moderating role of switching costs on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer retention. The empirical research was based on data collected by an Internet survey of adopters of Internet banking service in Hong Kong. Results from statistical analyses show that both customer satisfaction and switching costs have strong positive direct effects on customer retention. These analyses also confirm the moderating role of switching costs on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer retention. However, when Internet banking adopters are categorized into two segments according to their usage of Internet banking service (basic and advanced users), results show that switching costs play a significant moderating role on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer retention only for the basic Internet banking users. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2004