Update on innovators forum

A few weeks ago, I posted on Pol Navaro's idea of building up an Innovator's Forum, in the form of a quarterly conference call between banks with innovation programmes (or at least, an interest in innovation). We're going to be discussing the process of innovation, how it has helped institutions move up the curve, and the challenges and issues we've all faced.

It looks like this idea is one that a few people want, actually. So far, the list of banks that have signed up to attend are: Lloyds TSB (obviously, and our Chief Technology Officer, Gavin Michael, likes the idea so much he is planning to attend himself), HSBC, Egg, HBOS, Banca Sabadell, National Australia Group, Credit Suisse and Caja Navarra in Spain. I have calls into ING, and will be seeing the CIO of La Caixa next week. We may also have participation from Société Générale of France.

There was also a great deal of interest in attending from vendors. That was a much harder question to resolve, of course. Consultant Neil Robinson (of the excellent Lanzen Strategy blog) made the following comment:

...why limit participation to people employed by banks? The vast
majority of those effecting change within banks were outside
independent contractors. Would their views not be valuable, too?

It is a hard point of argue. Here at Lloyds TSB, for instance, we rely on vendors showing up with their new stuff to help us fill in our innovation pipeline. So I sent out an email to those people who'd indicated interest at the time, and basically came to the conclusion that most bank people were more interested in hearing from other banks than vendors at this stage. It is a reasonable decision I think: all of us see most of the major players all the time anyway, and the Forum is not designed to be a new channel for sales.

Other parties also expressed an interest. For example, Colin Henderson of BankWatch volunteered his time, as did Paul Penrose, Editor in Chief of FinExtra, who suggested we might like to use the FinExtra communities site in some way. These are topics which we will no doubt address in the first call.

In any event, if there are any banks out there that are still interested in joining up with this initiative, then please contact me at james.gardner@lloydstsb.co.uk. I will be sending out invitations to the initial call middle of next week.