The future of banking at HP Innovation Day

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    HP Labs is the research arm of the company, with facilities around the world. In Western Europe, the labs are in Bristol but there are others in Israel and Russia and the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. On Tuesday, the company brought its HP Labs roadshow to London, where around 150 people went to see what it had to offer.

    For most people, it may be difficult to see the connection between banking and the movie Shrek, but to HP's financial services experts they are closely connected. Whether it is the number of pixels on a screen or very large financial numbers, the question is: do they add up?

    "In truth, we could not see the connection between making a film and making money until one of the producers of [the original] Shrek visited our research labs," explained Ian Brooks, HP's director of research for the financial services industry.

    "He looked at our work and asked if we could use our technology to improve the way he made animated films," said Brooks. "We could help to speed up the labour-intensive process of rendering, and that really worked."

    According to Brooks, what followed this request was even more surprising. "We found people from the finance community coming back to us, having seen the film, and asking if we could help them in areas like improving the speed with which they could perform spreadsheet operations," he said. "They have very, very big spreadsheets."

    HP Labs is dedicated to research into areas such as the economics of IT and printing and imaging. The research that resulted in Shrek began as an experiment in producing and displaying high-quality graphics as quickly as possible. Like any research company, HP Labs does its work partly for the pure research possibilities and partly with an eye for the practical uses to which an idea can be put.

    The company has said that it sees innovation days as a way to open up its experience in various areas to potential customers. 

    To start with, visitors could take in a display (pictured) explaining the types of services and products on offer. It was a much more relaxed picture than the hi-tech artwork of Shrek.

    Caption by: Colin Barker

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    Identification technology was a major theme of the displays but, despite the camera, this system has nothing to do with identity. It is not concerned with who the person is, but rather what they are doing and for how long. In this case, the system can see people going past it and can see who they are, but it only wants enough information to establish their "uniqueness".

    The system works behind an electronic display that could be showing an advertisement for a car, or advertising a special offer from the company whose display it is. The system is intended to ascertain whether people are looking at the display and for how long they are doing so. If a person walks away from the display after only a second but then returns, the system identifies that the subject is the same person who walked away.

    By doing this, the system should, in a short time, be able to establish the effectiveness of the advertisement. The advertising community may well embrace this technology.

    Advertising is vital for banks and can be a major factor in attracting and keeping customers.

    The red dots on the screen grow smaller or larger, as people walk towards and away from the screen.

    Caption by: Colin Barker

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    The concern that somebody might steal your bankcard and strip your hard-earned money from it is a consistent worry for many people. Banks are also worried about handing cash out to the wrong people.

    There are many ways in which banks can verify people's identities, and they develop new methods all the time. These methods all boil down to the same idea: ensuring that the person removing the money is the person who holds the account.

    One company has devised a system that can do this by using three-factor authentication. The ValidSoft system works like this. Someone goes online to take money out of their account and transfer it somewhere else. They provide their name and account number, and perhaps some other detail, in order to access the point at which funds are transferred. Now, the ValidSoft system clicks in and the customer gets a phone call from the bank, telling them the value of the transaction and asking if it is authorised. The user then answers "yes" or "no".

    The phone call and the automated voice become another security check, as only the bank's own system can do this.

    "The phone call could be from the other side of the world," said ValidSoft's head of business development, John Petersen. "The speed is the same and the transaction remains on hold until that authorisation."

    The picture shows a transaction in progress. The highlighted box at the centre shows the bank being informed of the amount being asked for. The bank is waiting for approval.

    The trick is to be able to carry out the transaction very quickly while the customer is waiting to have it approved. If the customer has to wait for a minute longer than needed, they may hit "cancel" and go to another bank. "The speed is the secret," said Petersen.


    Caption by: Colin Barker

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    This picture shows a normal credit card with a microchip at the top left. The chip is tiny but holds 2MB. It is a "bald" chip, capable of holding a lot of information in any format. It could hold identity information, bank details or a few tunes. As HP pointed out, this type of chip is just waiting for banks to put it to good use.

    Caption by: Colin Barker

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    This is an idea still waiting for its day to dawn. There are all kinds of e-books readers available, but somehow none have quite managed to capture the public's imagination. This is a classic design and shows the wonderful clarity that electronic books can give to text. The pages can be turned and thumbed over at will and every aspect of the e-book reader mimics the behaviour of a real book.

    The problem is: you cannot easily stuff it in your pocket. For that we have to wait for the next breakthrough, explained one of HP's scientists. "The future is electronic paper," the researcher said. "We have it now but we have to get it in the right form and at the right cost."

    The moral? Don't throw away the old paperbacks just yet.

    Caption by: Colin Barker

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    After a long day, what can be better than a long drink? No cocktails at this bar though — at least not at 10 in the morning. This is the area designed to attract the loyalty of the banking community. It looks quiet now but it was put to good use later no doubt.

    Caption by: Colin Barker

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In London this week, the company hosted around 150 financial experts anxious to see HP tech that could help with the business of making money

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HP Labs is the research arm of the company, with facilities around the world. In Western Europe, the labs are in Bristol but there are others in Israel and Russia and the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. On Tuesday, the company brought its HP Labs roadshow to London, where around 150 people went to see what it had to offer.

For most people, it may be difficult to see the connection between banking and the movie Shrek, but to HP's financial services experts they are closely connected. Whether it is the number of pixels on a screen or very large financial numbers, the question is: do they add up?

"In truth, we could not see the connection between making a film and making money until one of the producers of [the original] Shrek visited our research labs," explained Ian Brooks, HP's director of research for the financial services industry.

"He looked at our work and asked if we could use our technology to improve the way he made animated films," said Brooks. "We could help to speed up the labour-intensive process of rendering, and that really worked."

According to Brooks, what followed this request was even more surprising. "We found people from the finance community coming back to us, having seen the film, and asking if we could help them in areas like improving the speed with which they could perform spreadsheet operations," he said. "They have very, very big spreadsheets."

HP Labs is dedicated to research into areas such as the economics of IT and printing and imaging. The research that resulted in Shrek began as an experiment in producing and displaying high-quality graphics as quickly as possible. Like any research company, HP Labs does its work partly for the pure research possibilities and partly with an eye for the practical uses to which an idea can be put.

The company has said that it sees innovation days as a way to open up its experience in various areas to potential customers. 

To start with, visitors could take in a display (pictured) explaining the types of services and products on offer. It was a much more relaxed picture than the hi-tech artwork of Shrek.

Caption by: Colin Barker

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