Boomers are taking control of their finances – unless banks demonstrate how their products help, they will become a casualty of newly engaged boomers looking for change.
For most boomers, the recession has not had a major impact on their retirement hopes – because their retirement hopes were always modest. The recession and stock market losses may have forced a few baby boomers, particularly moderately wealthy boomers, to adjust their image of retirement. However, almost three-quarters of baby boomers have less than $100,000 in investable assets. For these “mass market” boomers, the stereotypical pre-recession image of retirement was always far outside of their financial means. Mass market boomers have modest retirement expectations: they will reduce their living expenses, continue to work part-time, and travel very little. Read More »
We’re currently finalizing the design of a quantative project that will allow us to discern how good banks and insurance companies are, from an operational perspective, at responding to internal and external customer demands, as well as the impact that responsiveness (or operational agility) has on key success measures such as unit costs, operating margins and revenue growth. The big argument on the team is whether in a Financial Services environment, Operations can have ANY impact on revenue growth through an avenue other than service fulfillment. I say yes – not only CAN Operations impact revenue, they MUST enable revenue growth in order guarantee organizational success and protect efficiency gains. Some of my colleagues say nay, that is not Operations’ job, leave that up to the revenue folks. Let me tell you why I think they are wrong, and ask you to settle the argument for us.