From the JIBC Publisher

First Author's Name: Nahum Goldmann

First Author's Title/Affiliation: ARRAY Development, Ottawa, Canada; Publisher and Member of the Editorial Board, JIBC

Author's Personal/Organizational Website: http://www.arraydev.com/
Email: Nahum.Goldmann (at) ARRAYDev.Com
Brief Biographic Description: Nahum Goldmann, President, ARRAY Development, is a leading expert and a lecturer on building and securing ebanking and ecommerce, procurement, financial and governance strategies, Knowledge Process Outsourcing, as well as regulatory and government policy issues.

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Creative Bankers

According to many an astute observer of the global banking industry, new regulatory changes driven worldwide by the Obama administration and Basel III capital requirements will lead to the reduction of risky but highly profitable speculations with the clients’ investment assets. To maintain expected profitability and business sustainability, all financial institutions will have to pay far more attention to the operational banking.

Core operational/transactional banking is by far a too competitive low-margin service; hence, it is conceptually unprofitable. It could hardly provide exorbitant revenues that would compensate the financial industry for the possible losses on the investment side – even if a government severely limits competition through the use of regulatory barriers.

To survive and prosper, the financial industry has to urgently find new revenue sources beyond conventional and familiar core commodity banking. In our view, the hope that Internet online and mobile banking would automatically ensure service profitability, being able to compensate for the lukewarm investment performance, is misplaced. Although new types of banking are important enablers of revolutionary change, any new technology platform just by itself is unlikely to ensure service profitability. To the contrary, intensified competitive pressures in core online and mobile banking and higher margin transparency are likely to further erode conventional competitive advantages.

Which brings us to the key source of all competitive advantage – the visionaries. New banking executives should be able and ready to radically redefine the conventional banking system by introducing a multitude of the new value added high-margin services. Able to operate within the constraints of the modern GRC (Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance) framework, they should be also ready to conceptualize and implement novel value added services. Only such new online banking and payment services have the potential for ensuring high profitability and long-term sustainability of the global financial system.

Regretfully, visionary banking executives knowledgeable of the GRC and ebanking environment are in the exceedingly short supply. The ebanking scholars are also not that proactive in this new and exciting academic area, and the educators specialized in preparing banking professionals are typically preoccupied with the old paradigm issues.

My hope is that JIBC editors, authors and readers, raising to this challenge, would identify and involve in our community’s activities (research, publishing, conferences, consulting) all the seasoned banking executives around the globe who are unafraid to explore novel opportunities provided by the Internet.

Again, I am asking each and every one of you, our readers and subscribers, to email JIBC to at least 3 of your colleagues, friends and discussion groups that you are participating at, and recommend that they also subscribe. Please share information about JIBC articles with the Internet community and suggest to us new ways to promote JIBC among academics and professionals from around the globe.

As well, I am challenging all the current and past authors and editors to email your own articles -- along with the rest of JIBC edition -- to at least 10 of your peers and colleagues in academia, government and industry. Make sure that they are well aware of your articles and the Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce. Recommend that they also subscribe to email editions. After all, we send it around just 3-4 times a year.

A special appeal to ecommerce/ebusiness students to pass a word about JIBC to your professors and classmates and, more important, to ask them to supply new articles and tell everybody to subscribe.

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