Starting this weekend, the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) can impose fines of up to 8 million euros. The Dutch government hopes that increased penalties will act as a stronger deterrent for white-collar criminals.

The AFM supervises participants of all financial markets in the Netherlands, including financial service providers, stock brokers, bankers, insurance brokers, accountants and advisors. In the case of a violation of financial laws and regulations, the AFM is allowed to issue fines. Up till now, the maximum fine was 480,000 euros. From this Saturday, the AFM can issue a fine of 4 million euros for first time offenders and up to 8 million euros for repeat offenders. Additionally, managers and executives can now be personally fined.

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Maintaining adequate liquidity while stimulating economic growth can be a tricky business for banks.

This became apparent once again during a recent interview with Lucas Papademos, vice president of the European Central Bank (ECB), with the German business newspaper Handelsblatt.

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Have banks invested too little in common services, because the margins are too small? While the answer to that question might no longer be relevant, improvement of these services certainly is.

This is the conclusion of a recent Dutch study, commissioned by VODW Marketing, amongst some 5000 customers of 9 large Dutch banks.

The results: the quality of common daily services makes up 40% of the trust people put in a bank.

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Recently American Express announced a new and unique service that provides American Express Charge Cardmembers with the ability to set spending limits for additional cards on their account. This allows them to control expenditures in for instance a household with kids, nannies and helpers.

How does it work? The primary card holder allows others (people who are at least fifteen years old) to spend only the amount they’ve approved. He can modify the spending amount anytime, online or over the phone.

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Yesterday, The Dutch SNS Bank opened the first of its ‘SNS Shops’ in Haarlem, the Netherlands. All 150 SNS branch offices are to be replaced by 300 SNS Shops in the span of a couple of years.

The SNS Shops are primarily geared towards offering information and do not provide the possibility to deposit or withdraw money. This is a deliberate decision, as setting up the infrastructure to handle cash money has become increasingly expensive, while less and less people make use of this service.

Instead, the SNS Shop is presented as a very open and easily accessible place that you can pop into to get advice, buy a product or get help with online banking. And with opening hours extending into evenings and weekends, and twice as many SNS Shops planned as there are branch offices, accessibility is further increased.

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“Don’t blame me… I bank locally” reads the bumper sticker doled out for free by the Florence, Massachusetts based Florence Savings Bank. Their message: it was the big Wallstreet banks that brought on the crisis, small local banks are not to blame.

“There has been so much negative broad-brush painting of ‘banks’ in the media,” says Doug Burr, senior vice president of the Florence Savings Bank, “that many customers have been asking about the bank’s strength.” Which led the bank to communicate more clearly to their customers what the difference is between them and the big players. Small banks don’t deal with complex derivatives or aggressive trading, they are much too conservative and too boring for that, representatives of the sector point out.

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Even private bankers, serving the High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs), apparently need to open up their ears to their clientele.

This is one of the conclusions drawn in the 13th Annual World Wealth Report 2009, released by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch.

It turns out that in the past year, over 25% of the HNWIs withdrew their assets from their wealth management firm. Although most admitted this due to a loss of confidence or trust in their banker, it became apparent that a lot of them have seen their expectations remain unfulfilled. Clearly, even the most personal flavor of banking seems to have lost touch with their customer base.

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