<p>The retail banking market in Sweden is highly concentrated and oligopolistic. This has been confirmed by numerous reports from different competition authorities within the EU, for example the Swedish competition authority. A considerably high number of different sorts of competition barriers has been pointed out in these reports. The competition barriers are mainly directed to the smaller banks and the potential competition. The retail banking market in Sweden is dominated by four major banks, which together has over 80 percent of all market shares. These four dominating banks more or less control the payment systems and have a great deal of influence within the payment systems. It is necessary for all banks to be able to take part of the payment systems. The control that the four dominants have over the payment systems has been more significant considering their cooperation in so called infrastructure clubs. It is these clubs that have formed the conditions in every contract between the infrastructure club members and other smaller banks, who wants to be able to provide their customers a diversity of banking services. The dominating banks purpose with this infrastructure cooperation is to lower the network-expenses for the owners and to provide a more effective network-system. According to my results, these infrastructure clubs could help create a harder market climate and higher entry barriers for non-members than what ought to be considered as normal for such a market climate. Smaller banks who want to provide a variety of services, so called full-service banks, meet the hardest obstacles to overcome. Therefore there has not started a new full-service bank since 1993. The almost only payment system which the four dominants do not control is Riksbankens payment system “RIX”. The European commission has many different criteria in their search for different violations of abuse and dominant position. I have used nine of these in my paper. Eight of these criteria were concordant with my results whether or not connections exist to abuse and dominant position. My results have pointed out some problems that could be in dispute with Swedish competition law, considering the market position and the key role the members in an infrastructure club possesses. Despite the fact that detailed decisions from the European court of Justice (ECJ) especially obliges dominants to protect and not to distort competition in any way exists, my opinion is that there could be some parallels to a distorted competition on the Swedish retail banking market. Furthermore, the three different steps within the payment system are represented through the dominants participation when they are members in the same infrastructure club. This gives the result that their cooperation is vertically integrated. The cooperation involves important information about the member’s financial strengths and their ability to compete as a market actor, but also information of great importance of the infrastructure and its development and further efficiency. According to my results, the economical cooperation that the members of the infrastructure clubs have, could not be referred to as an “economic entity” in the same way as the ECJ used it regarding their investigations of collective dominance. The dominants cooperation, according to me, is better described as a collective behavior. The dominants cooperation in these infrastructure clubs could also be of that character as referred to in 6 § konkurrenslagen. I do not consider the payment systems owned by the dominants to have the same character as “essential facilities”, since smaller niched banks have entered the market and thus have chosen other channels than the dominants payment systems to reach their customers. I also have the opinion that every effect caused by the cooperation between the dominants could not be defendable as acceptable objective grounds. Due to the above mentioned arguments, I find it sensible to investigate further whether or not the dominants purpose with their infrastructure club is concordant with its means.</p>

The retail banking market in Sweden is highly concentrated and oligopolistic. This has been confirmed by numerous reports from different competition authorities within the EU, for example the Swedish competition authority. A considerably high number of different sorts of competition barriers has been pointed out in these reports. The competition barriers are mainly directed to the smaller banks and the potential competition. The retail banking market in Sweden is dominated by four major banks, which together has over 80 percent of all market shares. These four dominating banks more or less control the payment systems and have a great deal of influence within the payment systems. It is necessary for all banks to be able to take part of the payment systems. The control that the four dominants have over the payment systems has been more significant considering their cooperation in so called infrastructure clubs. It is these clubs that have formed the conditions in every contract between the infrastructure club members and other smaller banks, who wants to be able to provide their customers a diversity of banking services. The dominating banks purpose with this infrastructure cooperation is to lower the network-expenses for the owners and to provide a more effective network-system. According to my results, these infrastructure clubs could help create a harder market climate and higher entry barriers for non-members than what ought to be considered as normal for such a market climate. Smaller banks who want to provide a variety of services, so called full-service banks, meet the hardest obstacles to overcome. Therefore there has not started a new full-service bank since 1993. The almost only payment system which the four dominants do not control is Riksbankens payment system “RIX”. The European commission has many different criteria in their search for different violations of abuse and dominant position. I have used nine of these in my paper. Eight of these criteria were concordant with my results whether or not connections exist to abuse and dominant position. My results have pointed out some problems that could be in dispute with Swedish competition law, considering the market position and the key role the members in an infrastructure club possesses. Despite the fact that detailed decisions from the European court of Justice (ECJ) especially obliges dominants to protect and not to distort competition in any way exists, my opinion is that there could be some parallels to a distorted competition on the Swedish retail banking market. Furthermore, the three different steps within the payment system are represented through the dominants participation when they are members in the same infrastructure club. This gives the result that their cooperation is vertically integrated. The cooperation involves important information about the member’s financial strengths and their ability to compete as a market actor, but also information of great importance of the infrastructure and its development and further efficiency. According to my results, the economical cooperation that the members of the infrastructure clubs have, could not be referred to as an “economic entity” in the same way as the ECJ used it regarding their investigations of collective dominance. The dominants cooperation, according to me, is better described as a collective behavior. The dominants cooperation in these infrastructure clubs could also be of that character as referred to in 6 § konkurrenslagen. I do not consider the payment systems owned by the dominants to have the same character as “essential facilities”, since smaller niched banks have entered the market and thus have chosen other channels than the dominants payment systems to reach their customers. I also have the opinion that every effect caused by the cooperation between the dominants could not be defendable as acceptable objective grounds. Due to the above mentioned arguments, I find it sensible to investigate further whether or not the dominants purpose with their infrastructure club is concordant with its means.

Universiẗat, Diss.--St. Gallen, 2007. / Zsfassung in engl. Sprache.

Univ., Diss.--Bern, 2007.

Zugl.: Diss.

The theme of this thesis are trends in retail banking and their impact on bank's IT architecture. The history teaches us that the ability to catch trends quickly and to use them can bring significant competitive advantage. At the same time some trends may pose a threat to the company and their (trends) early detection may prevent later problems. It is therefore important to monitor trends and evaluate their impact on bank's business. Roughly half of the overall bank costs consists of IT costs which are determined by IT architecture of the bank. Bank's IT is defined by IT architecture so it is useful to consider examining the impact of trends to the IT architecture. The aim of this thesis is to identify impact of trends in retail banking on bank's IT architecture. In the first part I analyze trends in retail banking in order to find out which are the key. In the next section I compare different reference IT architectures. Subsequently at the most appropriate architecture I identify impact of trends in retail banking on bank's IT architecture. Banks that perceive trends mentioned in this thesis as important and at the same time have similar architecture which I describe in this thesis may use my findings to gain competitive advantage or to take measures necessary to mitigate risks which are connected with coming trends which can have a negative impact on banks.

This research work examines trends that affect information technology in the Czech retail banking. The main objective is the evaluation of IT trends adoption in retail banking. To achieve this goal, interviews with IT professionals in the Czech retail banks and IT consultants in the field of banking were taken. Specific objectives were identification and consolidation of IT trends in the banking sector through the analysis of relevant sources identified in the research. Consolidation is using the methodology mentioned in book Trend Management Toolkit by author Kjear. Analysis of IT trends in banking aimed to describe the identified trends and their position on the Hype Cycle curve. First part of work consist of introduction, goals, assumptions, limitations and expected benefits, specifying the current state by conducting research. The theoretical part describes the key bank characteristics and trends influencing retail bank sector. Based on an analysis of selected reports work identifies key IT trends in banking and their consolidation. The practical part discuss the results of in-depth interviews conducted with people with long lasting experience in IT in banks. Usefulness of the results can be seen in the identification of current IT trends in banking and the creation of an analytical procedure for finding the most significant trends of all currently mentioned. Furthermore, in evaluating the state of IT adoption trends, which is currently expected by retail banks and considering possible further steps in this area. Leading to decisions about future investments or to strategy review.

[Introduction] Cooperative banks in France have a major impact on the finance industry and the French economy. The French financial ecosystem differs in comparison with other European countries because of a higher number of cooperative banking groups, which have a dominant market share in the financial industry. With a highly competitive retail banking market frequently described as a commoditized space, customer satisfaction remains the largest competitive advantage for banks. [Research Purpose] Overall, the ambition with this research was to gain a deeper understanding of customer satisfaction in the retail banking market segment. The fundament of this thesis is a theoretical framework that analyzed customer satisfaction for retail clients of cooperative banks. By this, we identified which characteristic of the relationship between customers and their cooperative bank have the highest impact on customer satisfaction. Thus, our research question implied a search to explain an underlying causal relationship between six different variables within Perceived Quality and Perceived Value with customer satisfaction. Perceived Value (PV) included Trust, Employee Competences, and Price Transparency. Perceived Quality (PQ) included Accessibility, Reliability, and Reactivity. [Methodology] By adopting a quantitative approach, we could test, support and rank which variables impact customer satisfaction for cooperative banking clients. The analyzed dataset comprises a total of 21 914 respondents which are customers from 142 cooperative banking branches in France. [Results &amp; Conclusion] From the analysis of the empirical results, we answered our research question by detailing the relationships between perceived quality; perceived value, and customer satisfaction. Finally, our findings indicated that Perceived Quality contributes to customer satisfaction in cooperative banking to a larger extend than Perceived Value. Moreover, the study ranked the importance of each variables impacting customer satisfaction as follow: (1) Accessibility, (2) Employee Competences, (3) Trust, (4) Reliability, (5) Price Transparency, (6) Reactivity.

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Title: Basel II – The New Basel Capital Accord and its influence on small Swedish banks and their retail banking and risk management.</p><p>Seminar: May 24th, 2007</p><p>Course: FEK318 Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 10 Swedish credits</p><p>Authors: Mattias Kjellberg, David Uhlmann & Ivana Zubac</p><p>Advisor: Joakim Winborg</p><p>Keywords: Capital cover, capital requirements, Basel II, credit giving, credit risk, risk management, retail banking, small banks, pillar 2</p><p>Problem: What influence does Basel II and the new updated management of credit risks in pillar 1 and the active risk control in pillar 2 have on small Swedish banks retail banking?</p><p>Purpose: Our essay seeks to explore what influence pillar 1 and the new updated management of credit risks in the new capital accord Basel II have on small Swedish banks and what influence pillar 2 have. We also want to explain if Basel II has influences on small Swedish banks credit analysis and possible effects in their risk management and pricing.</p><p>Methodology: In our essay we use an inductive approach and our chosen research method is the qualitative one. We have chosen to look into four small Swedish banks, and the empirical data is obtained from telephone interviews with selected respondents from Länsförsäkringar Bank, SkandiaBanken, GE Money Bank and ICA Banken.</p><p>Conclusions:</p><p>• The work with credit scoring does not get influenced by Basel II if the Standardised Approach is chosen.</p><p>• Banks that’ve early implemented high technological systems in the organization, that small banks normally do, have gotten an easier transition to Basel II.</p><p>• Basel II will result in a risk adjusted pricing and a more fair credit market.</p><p>• Internal Ratings-based Approaches is very demanding to develop, but at the same time it’s a more risk sensitive approach.</p><p>• Pillar 2 results in a more sophisticated work for the small banks.</p><p>• Basel II results in a further price press on residential loans in Sweden.</p>

ABSTRACT Title: Basel II – The New Basel Capital Accord and its influence on small Swedish banks and their retail banking and risk management. Seminar: May 24th, 2007 Course:FEK318 Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 10 Swedish credits Authors: Mattias Kjellberg, David Uhlmann & Ivana Zubac Advisor: Joakim Winborg Keywords: Capital cover, capital requirements, Basel II, credit giving, credit risk, risk management, retail banking, small banks, pillar 2 Problem: What influence does Basel II and the new updated management of credit risks in pillar 1 and the active risk control in pillar 2 have on small Swedish banks retail banking? Purpose: Our essay seeks to explore what influence pillar 1 and the new updated management of credit risks in the new capital accord Basel II have on small Swedish banks and what influence pillar 2 have. We also want to explain if Basel II has influences on small Swedish banks credit analysis and possible effects in their risk management and pricing. Methodology: In our essay we use an inductive approach and our chosen research method is the qualitative one. We have chosen to look into four small Swedish banks, and the empirical data is obtained from telephone interviews with selected respondents from Länsförsäkringar Bank, SkandiaBanken, GE Money Bank and ICA Banken. Conclusions: • The work with credit scoring does not get influenced by Basel II if the Standardised Approach is chosen. • Banks that’ve early implemented high technological systems in the organization, that small banks normally do, have gotten an easier transition to Basel II. • Basel II will result in a risk adjusted pricing and a more fair credit market. • Internal Ratings-based Approaches is very demanding to develop, but at the same time it’s a more risk sensitive approach. • Pillar 2 results in a more sophisticated work for the small banks. • Basel II results in a further price press on residential loans in Sweden.