"What important functions have IT provided to the finance industry and what additional advances would you expect IT to contribute?"
It's for a job interview, not homework :)
Any ideas?
It's for a job interview, not homework :)
Any ideas?
Finance question
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Finance question One of the things I'd guess, is that it has made it easier to get the information you want/need easier and faster.
Also the "user-friendliness" can (arguably) be said to have improved abit as well..
It kind of depends on in what area of finance industry you're looking at.
Also the "user-friendliness" can (arguably) be said to have improved abit as well..
It kind of depends on in what area of finance industry you're looking at.
Banks.
Cash machines. Cheque clearing. Online banking. Data entry. Credit history checks. Investment monitoring. International coverage.
I work for a financial software developer. Our software's used for managing financial agreements, like loans between banks, and exchange rate trades, there's hundreds of thousand sof these going on all the time, and there's no way on earth you could do it without computers.
I work in the finance industry (Bank IT).
Volumes! IT has provided the possibility to handle more customers more efficiently. Also it has made it possible to store more information about the customer, things that are a bit trivial, but in some cases useful.
Speed. Money moves quicker around the world, service is faster... You may not think this when you're queing in the bank, but believe me, you don't want to go back 30 years, when half of the work was manual.
Data mining. Being able to crunch through massive amounts of data to find out different customer profiles. Like, if this customer bought products A and B, and another customer who behaves like the first one but has only product B, we should market the product A for him.
There are tons of little things I can think of, but here are the main guide lines. Finance was one of the first non-military industries to use computers in a big scale. That was like 60 years ago. Keep that in mind. Current banks can't live without computers.
I can' be sure what the future will bring to this industry, but I think that the future is moving from product based service into customized product packaging. Like, defining customers needs and creating this... this product... blob. A collection of services if you could call it. This is a huge task to do manually for every client, so that's where the IT comes in. Computers doing most of the work.
Volumes! IT has provided the possibility to handle more customers more efficiently. Also it has made it possible to store more information about the customer, things that are a bit trivial, but in some cases useful.
Speed. Money moves quicker around the world, service is faster... You may not think this when you're queing in the bank, but believe me, you don't want to go back 30 years, when half of the work was manual.
Data mining. Being able to crunch through massive amounts of data to find out different customer profiles. Like, if this customer bought products A and B, and another customer who behaves like the first one but has only product B, we should market the product A for him.
There are tons of little things I can think of, but here are the main guide lines. Finance was one of the first non-military industries to use computers in a big scale. That was like 60 years ago. Keep that in mind. Current banks can't live without computers.
I can' be sure what the future will bring to this industry, but I think that the future is moving from product based service into customized product packaging. Like, defining customers needs and creating this... this product... blob. A collection of services if you could call it. This is a huge task to do manually for every client, so that's where the IT comes in. Computers doing most of the work.
Thank you so much!!
SAGE accouunting software
without computers there would be no ATM
just where would you be around midnight without taxi money home
do you accept cheques?
no f**k off
all these little things we take for granted happen on a daily basis numerous times a second
back to ATM's without a credit card (also reliant on technology i remember having to phone up for authourisation on sales over a certain ammount now its just chip n pin/swipe) you can still get dosh out of a forgin ATM and it quotes (afaik) that days excange rate and even though you take out euro's it deducts the equivelant amount of sterling (or your country's currency)
just where would you be around midnight without taxi money home
do you accept cheques?
no f**k off
all these little things we take for granted happen on a daily basis numerous times a second
back to ATM's without a credit card (also reliant on technology i remember having to phone up for authourisation on sales over a certain ammount now its just chip n pin/swipe) you can still get dosh out of a forgin ATM and it quotes (afaik) that days excange rate and even though you take out euro's it deducts the equivelant amount of sterling (or your country's currency)
heh, the new ATM's scared me a bit. You put the check through without an envelope and it gets scanned and prints a copy on the reciept. You don't even have to type how much the check id for, it uses OCR to read the value and asks you to confirm it got the right ammount.
It's kind of cool, but I dread the day that a check gets mangled in the machine because some brainless twit decided to stick bubble gum in there or something.
It's kind of cool, but I dread the day that a check gets mangled in the machine because some brainless twit decided to stick bubble gum in there or something.
I've sent the question off now. Thanks for the help. Any futher advice, though useful to my general knowledge and perhaps the actual interview, won't be used in my question lol.
The spreadsheet had a major impact and is regarded by some as the first 'killer app'.
Automatic investing by algorithms(AI).
Job security for IT professionals.