It's clear that the next few weeks could be quite decisive for the Euro, the EU zone and the troubled EU countries in particular. The pressure to effectively drive political discussion has now been maximized and this has without a doubt put the EU is it its finest hour. This was all to be expected and it's simply a logical consequence of the ambition to grow towards an EU that's capable to play its role on the global stage. The time has come to take courage and implement the ambition, through a joint political effort. The problems in the EU zone are related to both fiscal- and monetary issues . The economic downturn has revealed the simple truth that the individual EU countries can and should not individually deal with those issues anymore, but need to work together to resolve them.

Typically, rules are perceived to be useful, if they serve the common good. Rules are perceived to be less useful if they do not serve individual interests. The discussion on the impact of implementing Basel-III is now well underway, but it seems it needs to deal with this simple issue first, before dealing with all the technicalities. Banks are now seeking the media to broadcast their concern about the fact that additional regulation, additional capital requirements and changed accounting standards imply an operational risk that is maybe too hard to handle.

The primary goal of supervision is to facilitate market discipline, create a 'level playing field' and therefore support long term financial stability. Basically, banks should manage and supervise their business, in alignment with the interests of all stakeholders. Good performance can be rewarded by stakeholders and bad performance can be adjusted, through market discipline. In the worst case, this approach would make sure that even a bankruptcy could be properly managed. Banks that are 'too big to fail' are clearly not doing a good job of supervising themselves.

De belangrijkste functie van de hedendaagse Business Intelligence systemen is invloed uitoefenen bij het maken van beslissingen. Organisaties kunnen daardoor efficiënter omgaan met mogelijkheden en gevaren.

Na de instorting van Fortis is het onvermijdelijk de toekomst onder ogen te gaan zien. Nadat de emoties zijn geluwd, de media en de deskundigen alles wel gezegd hebben, is het tijd om schoon schip te maken. Er zijn geluiden dat dit het moment is om te starten met een gestructureerde aanpassing van het globale financiële stelsel. Maar is dit wel nodig?

Informatiesystemen en zekerheid

Banken ontkomen niet aan toenemende regelgeving, concurrentie, eventueel gepaard gaand met fusies en overnames. Hierdoor is het voor banken nodig om ondernemender te opereren. Datawarehousing helpt banken de beste keuzes te maken.

Ik schrijf al enige tijd over Basel-II en de kredietcrisis in Banking Review, met als doel om een beter begrip te krijgen in deze complexe materie. Ik probeer daarbij ook altijd in te haken op wat er in de nationale- en internationale media geschreven wordt over deze onderwerpen. Tot voor kort waren deze artikelen schaars en ‘generiek’. De laatste weken wordt de schade ruimschoots ingehaald, omdat er een enorme hoeveelheid artikelen is gepubliceerd, in alle media.