“Start-ups sind sexy”: Wie die Bankenstadt Frankfurt bei Fintechs aufholt

My take on the discussion concerning fintech ecosystem in Germany or in brief Berlin vs. Frankfurt 😉

Weltweit ist Frankfurt als Bankenstadt bekannt. Doch innovative junge Finanzunternehmen bevorzugen oft noch Berlin. Nun will die Main-Metropole aufholen.

Source: “Start-ups sind sexy”: Wie die Bankenstadt Frankfurt bei Fintechs aufholt

Blockchain und Künstliche Intelligenz sind spannende Themen für Banken

Second part of the interview on innovations and innovation management in banking.

Finanzinstitute sehen sich einer Vielzahl neuer Technologien gegenüber. Doch welche sind wirklich wichtig für Wachstum und Erfolg und ermöglichen neue Geschäftsmodelle? Darüber habe ich mich ausführlich mit Sven Korschinowski von KPMG und Remigiusz Smolinski von comdirect unterhalten.

Source: Blockchain und Künstliche Intelligenz sind spannende Themen für Banken

Innovation und Innovations-Management in Banken

Here is the first part of the interview with Sven Korschinowski and me on innovations and innovation management in banking für Hansjörg Leichsenring’s Der Bank Blog.

Die Notwendigkeit von – vor allem digitalen – Innovationen für Banken wird landauf-landab viel diskutiert. Doch ist dies wirklich ein Schlüssel zu mehr Erfolg im Wettbewerb? Darüber und wie Innovationsmanagement aussehen sollte, habe ich mich ausführlich mit Sven Korschinowski von KPMG und Remigiusz Smolinski von comdirect unterhalten.

Source: Innovation und Innovations-Management in Banken

comdirect innovations featured on Bild.de

Fully dressed featured on Bild.de 😉

Im Rennen um die Bank der Zukunft sieht sich die Comdirect Bank an der Spitze. Mit Innovationen und Apps will Deutschlands drittgrößte Direktbank (zwei Millionen Kunden) umfassender Finanzbegleiter der Verbraucher werden.BILD durfte sich in den Entwicklungsabteilungen des Geldhauses umschauen. Ein Ortsbesuch.

Source: BILD auf Ortsbesuch | Hier entstehen die Banking-Apps der Zukunft *** BILDplus Inhalt *** – Konto und Bank – Bild.de

Season for Innovation Awards

2016 is slowly coming to an end and it has been an amazing year!  I am very happy that our ideas and hard work on developing them into products have been noticed by the experts and peers from the financial industry.  This year we have received 4 innovation awards for the products we either initiated, developed or both.  Here is a brief recap of our this year’s successful innovations:

Startup Garage was one of my first ideas at comdirect.  I described it briefly in one of my earlier posts.  Yesterday, on November 16, we were honored to receive:

Innovationspreis

the Innovation Award 2016 in the category business model granted us by bankenversicherungen.de during the 19th Euro Finance Week in Frankfurt.  We are very happy that our essentially very simple idea, was recognized by the senior academics and professionals from the jury.  We perceive it as a very valuable expert confirmation that our intuition was correct but our ambition does not let us slow down or stop.  We have lots of ideas how we could further develop our Startup-Garage and bring it to a completely new level.

Innovationspreis 2016

Photos: (c) Jens Braune del Angel / Maleki Group

Bonus-Sparen is also one of the ideas from my early days at comdirect and I have already described briefly our interpretation of shopping for the retirement plan in one of my earlier posts. At the beginning of September, we received a Customer Innovation Award also know as Kunden-Innovationspreis 2016 also for Bonus-Sparen.  Since its launch in August, thousands comdirect customers have registered for Bonus-Sparen and many have made their first investments in securities, realizing that it is easier than they had thought.  Mission accomplished?  Definitely not!  It is only the beginning!  We have lots of ideas, how to make Bonus-Sparen even more intuitive, easy to use and bigger.  Some of them will go live even this year so stay tuned!

bonussparen-innovationspreis

smartPay App – the idea for this product has been around at comdirect long before I joined in April 2015.  Interestingly enough, this project originally received a code name:  Kill Bill because its original objective was to help our customers pay their paper invoices by scanning them with a smartphone.  Later our product vision evolved further and we decided to include an archive to store and categorize important documents as well as other convenience features.  smartPay app has brought us two innovation awards.  First, in March, we won YouGov’s Customer Innovation award also know as Kunden-Innovation 2016:

… and a half year later, we got the first international innovation award in comdirect’s history and were awarded with Efma & accenture’s silver Innovation Award 2016 in the category: Payment and Wallet:

efma-innovation-award

None of this would have been possible without passion and dedication of many involved colleagues who tirelessly worked on turning our ideas and visions into the products our customers would enjoy.  Thank you all!  You are the true innovation stars!

Despite having a very innovative year 2016, paraphrasing Steve Jobs, we stay foolish and hungry for more!

 

Innovation Bootcamp und Collabothon – Defining the Future of Banking

A short report on our Innovation Bootcamp and the announcement of the Collabothon from the IT-Finanzmagazin.

September 5-7 we took 15 innovation drivers from Commerzbank, mBank, ebase, Neugelb Studios, VISA, and of course comdirect on an unforgettable journey to London to exchange ideas and seek inspiration in one of the world’s fintech capitals.  We visited Barclay’s Accelerator, Winton Labs, R3 Consortium, VISA Collab, Level 39, and Startup Bootcamp.  We listened to great pitches and inspirational presentations and also found some time to enjoy the beauty of London.

It was great to meet so many people who are so passionate about what they do.  It was great to feel the energy of the fintech community.  But above of all, it was great to see that some of our crazy ideas are not that crazy afterwards 😉

Ideas come from everywhere and we brought lots of them from London so stay tuned!  I hope to report on some of them shortly.

 

 

Source: » Level39, Innovation Bootcamp und Collabothon – Gemeinsam für die Zukunft des Banking

Strategic Usage of Dynamic Pricing at Otto Group 

Developing a concept, testing and rolling out dynamic pricing in various entities of the Otto Group was one of the most exciting projects I have ever managed.  Lots of interesting insights into innovation, data, and human nature.

Dynamic pricing is essentially based on simple economic principles (Economics 101) but its practical implementation in e-commerce and brick and mortar retail has only become possible in the last decade.  Our project started at the whiteboard.  It felt great to sketch demand functions again, calculate their elasticities and solve optimization problems.  This exercise gave us a good idea for what we need.

For economists, dynamic pricing is nothing new or exciting.  Most of those who have received formal training in this discipline have learned how to estimate a demand function, how to calculate its elasticity, and how setup an objective function for whatever needs to be optimized (revenues, profit, or stock levels) and solve optimization problems.  So much about theory but is it possible to apply it in real markets, to real customers and with real products?

The answer is yes but it is rather tricky.  First, because demand functions are not stable in time.  They change and for some products they might even change rather often.  Demand functions might be different in the mornings and in the evenings.  They might be different on the weekdays and on weekends.  They may vary with seasons and of course with the weather.  What does it mean in practice?  To take full advantage of dynamic pricing, the underlying demand functions need to be constantly adjusted and the algorithm needs to look for temporal patters.  Only then it can suggest the right level of prices at the right time.

Second, dynamic pricing needs data, lots of data and ideally it needs it fast.  The algorithm needs to know, which products are bought and when.  It needs to know, how much of which product we have on stock and how fast we can reorder.  If we consider the number of products sold and the fact that each product version (e.g. size, color) can (at least theoretically) be optimized separately, we are talking about a mass of data.  Ideally, the algorithm also needs to have this data real-time or as close to it as possible.  The length and speed of the feedback loops between the market and the machine determines the potential of dynamic pricing in a particular application.

Third, dynamizing prices in any organization, in which they previously had been set by individuals is a huge change project.  It is man against the machine.  The larger the shop, the more volatile the demand, the less chance a man stands in this uneven battle.  But despite this obvious imbalance of processing power, it is ultimately a man that has to decide to make himself redundant and it is not so easy.  Maybe I will write a book about it some day.

So implementing dynamic pricing in organizations is typically an extra large project both in terms of the efforts as well as the potential benefits but the question is:  is it worth it?  It is very complex, it is rather expensive (most likely at least a six-digit number), and it ends up as a large scale organisational change project.  To overweight these factors the potential benefits must be huge!  … and they can be especially for the retailers whose scale of operations is large enough.  According to well informed sources, dynamic prices can increase revenue and profitability by 5-6%. This is a rather conservative estimate.  In its most extreme version, the impact of dynamic pricing can be even higher!  What does it mean?  Fully automated dynamic pricing is probably best suitable for large retailers or those selling a fast moving but limited assortment.  Although it is merely a rule of a thumb, I would expect that retailers with yearly revenues significantly below 100 million (dollar or euro) would have a hard time squeezing more benefits out of this technology than their investment necessary to implement it.

There are various solutions for smaller retailers and I promise to share some of my thoughts on this topic here at some point.

Dynamic pricing works and offers a powerful way of translating high level strategic objectives (growth vs. profitability vs. stock levels) on the most granular level of SKU prices.  It also implements brand strategies which are perfectly aligned with customers’ perception and their resulting price sensitivity.  It captures also the most relevant changes in company’s environment and immediately suggests appropriate  pricing adjustments.

All this magic happens, when we dare to trust the machines 😉

Customer Innovation Award aka Kunden-Innovationspreis 2016 for comdirect  

Bonus-Sparen is an excellent example of a complete innovation process.  It started as a wild idea, a vision, which then was conceptualized, pretotyped, tested, prototyped and launched to the market.  Although I still believe we could have done it sooner, we were the first bank in Germany, maybe even in Europe to launch a similar product.  We managed even to hit the market before fintechs, despite their great innovative capacity and development agility.

This innovation award (Kunden-Innovationspreis) is the best confirmation that with focus and dedication a great team can deliver great results, even at a bank.  I am very proud of my team and everyone else who supported us in turning our vision into this great product.

Who if not us, when if not now?

Source: Kunden-Innovationspreis 2016 u.a. für Comdirect Bank  | Markenartikel

Innovation Now! Die Rolle von Innovation für die Zukunft des Bankings

My presentation during  the Social Media Week Hamburg on 24.02.2016.  Unfortunately, only in German ;-(  A short summary for the busy ones:  disruptive innovations in banking are developed outside of the banking sector -> bank was yesterday?

If we do not believe in a better future, it will not happen – on innovations with innovation consultants

This interview is a bit older but hopefully not less relevant.  One of the most important characteristics of an innovation manager is his/her firm belief in a better future and a passion to make it happen.

Source: If we do not believe in a better future, it will not happen