新兴银行

　　Ripe for disruption

　　扰乱时机正当时

　　A rush of new entrants hope to shake up banking

　　新兴银行这股狂流欲重组银行业

　　“I PROMISE to open a bank account for a British citizen in just two minutes”, says Nazzim Ishaque brightly. With a background in IT, banking and asset management, he is submitting plans to the regulators to start a new bank called Lintel; the two-minute pledge is one of his selling points. Mr Ishaque reckons that he can do better than the existing banks, and is putting plenty of his own money where his mouth is, as part of the ￡5m ($7.5m) start-up cost. He hopes to start doing business early next year.

　　Nazzim Ishaque明确表示：“我承诺可以两分钟内为英国人民开通银行账户。”他从事过互联网、银行和资产管理行业，现向多家监管机构提交新建银行Lintel的计划方案，卖点之一就是两分钟开户的承诺。Ishaque认为他可以比现有银行做得更好，而且为了更具说服力，拿出自己的大量资金投放到总数500万欧元（750万美元）的启动资金中。他希望明年年初开始营业。

　　经济学人 新兴银行 可可英语.jpg

　　Since April 2013 three new British banks have appeared and three outfits have taken over old licences. Martin Stewart, who doles out banking licences at the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), part of the Bank of England, says people are now applying to open banks in “unprecedented numbers”. Four applicants are likely to start operating this year, he says, with a further four or so probably coming to market next year. At least as far as the consumer is concerned, banking could be on the verge of quite a shake-up.

　　2013年4月份以来，英国有三家银行成立，三家银行机构收购老牌银行。马克·斯图尔特在英格兰银行分支机构审慎监管局负责颁发银行营业执照，他表示“从未见过”这么多人申请开设银行，说道：有望在今年开始运营的银行有四家，明年能营业的大约有另外四家。至少对于消费者而言，银行业可能面临大幅度重组的境地。

　　Since March 2013 the process to apply for a license has been streamlined. The PRA claims that a new bank can be up and running just six months after final authorisation. The capital requirements for the start-ups are lower than they used to be. And many of the new entrants are acting like classic entrepreneurs. They work out how the existing banks are failing customers, then look for niches, whether in products, customers or technology. All are encouraged by the growing willingness of consumers to switch from one bank to another (see chart), stimulated in part by regulations designed to make this easier.

　　自2013年3月份起，申请营业执照的过程实现精简化。审慎监管局声称：新建银行仅需经过最终授权后六个月内就可以挂牌营业了。他们对启动资本的要求比以往降低。很多新建银行的行事方式像是典型的企业家。他们发现现有银行在哪些方面不合客户心意，然后探寻诸如产品、客户或技术方面的商机。客户们跨行热情日益高涨（见图表）促使新建银行将跨行手续的操作变得更为简便。

　　Mr Ishaque's niche will be immigrants, both students on short-stay visas and longer-term economic migrants. They are treated “extremely badly” by existing banks, he claims. He will offer a full range of products, in many languages, digitally and also at a few branches, to be located at the most convenient places for his target customers—such as the railway stations in London that serve Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

　　Ishaque将商机锁定在外来移民身上，包括持短期签证的学生和长期的经济移民。他表示现有银行对这些人的态度“极其恶劣”。他会在一些分支机构提供各种各样的多语言电子产品，这些机构将落户于有目标客户的最便利地点，如位于伦敦希思罗和盖特威克两家机场服务范围的火车站。

　　Atom Bank's niche, by contrast, is technological. It will be the first British bank to be digital-only, with all transactions done through smartphones and tablets, via an app. This ought to lower the bank's overheads. Set up by Mark Mullen, a former head of branchless bank First Direct, and Anthony Thomson, co-founder of another of the new wave of “challenger” banks, Metro, Atom Bank should start operating in the second half of this year. (Metro Bank itself, which started in 2010, is following a quite different road: it is opening new branches almost as quickly as traditional banks like Lloyds, RBS, Barclays and HSBC are closing them.)

　　与此相比，原子银行将商机放在技术方面。它将是英国首家在线网络银行，所以交易都通过智能手机和平板电脑上的一款应用软件完成。这会降低银行的店营费用。该家银行由无分支机构的第一直通银行前任行长马克·马兰与新一轮挑战者银行首都银行的合伙创始人安东尼·汤姆森共同创立，预计于今年下半年付诸运营。（于2010年启运的首都银行不走寻常路，增设分支机构的速度几乎赶上劳埃德、苏格兰皇家银行、巴克莱银行与汇丰银行这些老牌银行关闭分支的速度。）

　　The banking sector is currently the subject of a review by the Competition and Markets Authority, an official watchdog. Most of the new entrants would agree with the authority's criticism that some features of the current banking market “prevent, restrict or distort competition”, in relation to both personal customers and small businesses. The entrepreneurs also claim that their innovative new products and technologies will help to address some of those criticisms. Mr Mullen, for instance, attacks what he calls the opaque pricing of many current accounts: a selling point of Atom Bank, he claims, is that all its pricing will be utterly transparent. “We will drive change,” he says.

　　银行业成为竞争与市场管理局这家官方监察机构目前的评议对象。该机构评论称，现在金融市场的某些特征“阻碍、限制或扭曲”了对个人客户和小型企业的竞争，对此大部分新兴银行都予以赞同。同时，银行创办人声称其新开发的创意产品和技术将有助于解决评论指出的一些问题。马兰指责他称之为诸多活期存款不透明定价的行为。原子银行的一个卖点是其所有定价完全透明。他表示：“我们将引领变革。”