The financial services industry and society

The Norwegian Financial Services Industry

“islamic Financial Services Industry: the European Challenges”

What is Islamic Finance? There are at least three characteristics which makes it different from the conventional debt finance. First, it prohibits riba or interest, or in other words a fixed and pre-determined rate of return to be paid on the deposits or to be received from the borrowers. The rate of return is variable and determined by the profit and loss that the bank makes during a given per...

Regulation and the Evolution of the Financial Services Industry

This paper provides a foundation for evaluating recent changes in regulatory design in light of the increasingly competitive and dynamic environment of banking. Intrusive, control-oriented direct and indirect approaches to regulation have become very costly. Regulation that focuses on setting minimum requirements will become dominant. Supervision would then primarily aim at verifying compliance...

Operational Process Management in the Financial Services Industry

Today, service companies like hotel chains, tour operators, insurance companies, and banks have to deal with tough competition in their respective markets. To survive in this situation the companies’ business models, cost reduction initiatives, and efforts for increasing revenues require continuous adjustments. Otherwise, these companies might fall prey to the ongoing consolidation process. Due...

Clicks vs. Bricks in the Emerging Online Financial Services Industry

The emergence of electronic commerce raises important questions about the building and leveraging of legitimacy for both practitioners and scholars of strategy. New entrants’ click-and-mortar or click-and-click business models are challenging the legitimacy of large and mature brick-and-mortar incumbents. The implications of this challenge for the financial services industry—as for many other i...