Mr. Ali Raza

• 
  www.speerandassociates.com/index.php?option=com_content - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/6/2008    Last Visited: 6/6/2008  

  Ali Raza
  
  RazaAli RazaExecutive Vice President
  ...
  Ali Raza is Executive Vice President of Speer & Associates, Inc. (S&A) with responsibility for the management and performance of consulting projects in the U.S. and abroad.In this capacity, he focuses on strategic planning advisory support at the corporate level and within the retail banking, payments and transaction processing businesses.Mr. Raza brings a valuable combination of international and domestic experience helping to provide S&A clients a global perspective of trends and best practices in the financial services industry.
  
  Mr. Raza has an extensive background in retail banking, card issuance / acquiring and payments, including strategy development, business line management, and value optimization.Additional areas of expertise and interest include product design, financial management, and emerging payment products including Internet and mobile.He has assisted numerous clients in growing their profitability, increasing market share, enhancing shareholder value and improving operating performance.
  
  S&A domestic and international client engagements have focused on high-level strategic planning / tactical execution support, business line planning, and market development for major banks, card associations, Internet based companies, specialty finance companies, credit card issuers, merchant acquirers, and transaction processors.Significant recent client engagements have included M&A support in Latin America, an analysis of merchant industry pricing in North America, and a market assessment study for commercial payment solutions in Canada.Additionally, Mr. Raza has been supporting a leading Internet company with its regional payments strategy.In the U.S.Mr. Raza has been providing decision support and thought leadership to various U.S. banks evaluating their position in credit card lending.Frequently quoted in the industry press, Mr. Raza has also written numerous articles for publication.
  
  Mr. Raza's professional career has been concentrated in retail financial services and payments.Prior to joining S&A, Mr. Raza established and subsequently managed the credit card business at a leading overseas bank where he also held senior management positions in retail banking, merchant acquiring, and consumer payments.He began his career at a New York-based money centre bank.
  
  Mr. Raza holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Reed College.

• 
  Are Free Terminals Leading to Consolidation? - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/1/2006    Last Visited: 7/20/2008  

  VeriFone Holdings, Inc.'s announced acquisition of Lipman Electronic Engineering Ltd. is expected to be the first and the largest deal among POS equipment manufacturers in a current round of industry consolidation, according to Ali Raza, Executive Vice President for Speer & Associates, Alpharetta, Ga., but other combinations are likely to occur among smaller companies, not among the other major players, analysts agree. Following the acquisition, which was announced in April and is expected to close by the end of October, VeriFone will become the largest global provider of electronic payment solutions and services, capitalizing on accelerating growth in the emerging markets and demand for IP-based and wireless payment systems, according to Raza.
  ...
  The combination will make VeriFone much larger than the other two major players in the market, Hypercom and Ingenico, Raza said.The larger size will give VeriFone some advantages in pricing and scale, forcing Hypercom and Ingenico to seek combinations of their own, according to Raza.However, he wouldn't speculate as to whether Hypercom or Ingenico would be acquisition targets themselves. (Representatives from those two companies didn't respond to Transaction World's several requests for interviews. )
  ...
  Raza agreed that the deal is a good fit in terms of geographic strengths of the two companies.He also said that it's a good fit in terms of the equipment specialities of the two firms.
  ...
  Raza and Bucek expect the combination to be a boost for VeriFone's bottom line.

• 
  Credit & Collections World | Credit & Collections Risk - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/24/2003    Last Visited: 12/24/2003  

  "The ability for managers to make decisions manually within a highly automated environment is a key point of differentiation, especially for mid-tier lenders," says Ali Raza, a vice president for Atlanta-based Speer & Associates.

• 
  Credit & Collections World | Credit & Collections Risk - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/22/2003    Last Visited: 4/25/2005  

  A lot of corporations are moving to the Six Sigma route, not just in collections," observes Ali Raza, senior vice president of Speer & Associates, an Atlanta-based boutique management-consulting firm that specializes in the financial services industry.

• 
  MSN Money - How that huge credit limit can hurt you - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 11/30/2003    Last Visited: 9/28/2004  

  "A lot of larger issuers run automatic line increase programs," says Ali Raza, a vice president at Speer and Associates Inc.
  ...
  "Larger, more sophisticated issuers are very, very aggressively marketing credit lines both upwards and downwards," Raza says.

• 
  MerchantService.com - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/11/2008    Last Visited: 5/14/2008  

  For years, says Ali Raza, vice president at Speer, merchants resisted PIN debit because of the cost of the point-of-sale PIN pads necessary to process transactions, but the devices have steadily dropped in price and now range between $100 and $150.The devices are still rare among small retailers and in certain merchant categories, such as hotels and restaurants, but they are beginning to migrate down the retailing ranks from large supermarket chains, which were among the first to deploy them "Mid-tier merchants have started to install them," says Raza.He figures anywhere from 25% to 30% of all U.S. merchant locations are now equipped with PIN pads, up from 20% a year ago.
  
  Helping to make the case for PIN debit are two other factors, Raza says.These include the increased security lent to direct debit transactions by PINs rather than signatures.Consumers and merchants concerned about the rise of identity theft are responding to that feature.At the same time, the settlement last year of the huge Wal-Mart anti-trust suit against the bank card networks swept away the networks' longstanding "honor all cards" rule, so that merchants accepting Visa and MasterCard credit cards could for the first time refuse the signature debit products from those brands.Wal-Mart itself famously exercised this freedom in February when it began refusing MasterCard's signature debit card.And Raza says he has heard anecdotally that as many as 500 other retailers have followed suit, though these are small merchants whose decisions have not had any impact on total signature-debit volume.The de-linking of credit and signature debit, however, meant that merchants that installed PIN debit had extra leverage with the card associations, since they had an alternative-and generally less expensive--debit card network to turn to."In many ways the merchant community is exercising its right to move to a cheaper processing alternative," says Raza.
  
  Visa, at least, may not have as much to lose from this trend as MasterCard.With PIN debit transactions growing at a faster rate than signature-debit payments, Raza says it's only a matter of time before Visa begins promoting its PIN debit network, Interlink, more aggressively."Some of those signature debit transactions that get displaced will migrate to Interlink," he predicts.

• 
  MerchantService.com - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/11/2008    Last Visited: 7/25/2008  

  For years, says Ali Raza, vice president at Speer, merchants resisted PIN debit because of the cost of the point-of-sale PIN pads necessary to process transactions, but the devices have steadily dropped in price and now range between $100 and $150.The devices are still rare among small retailers and in certain merchant categories, such as hotels and restaurants, but they are beginning to migrate down the retailing ranks from large supermarket chains, which were among the first to deploy them "Mid-tier merchants have started to install them," says Raza.He figures anywhere from 25% to 30% of all U.S. merchant locations are now equipped with PIN pads, up from 20% a year ago.
  
  Helping to make the case for PIN debit are two other factors, Raza says.These include the increased security lent to direct debit transactions by PINs rather than signatures.Consumers and merchants concerned about the rise of identity theft are responding to that feature.At the same time, the settlement last year of the huge Wal-Mart anti-trust suit against the bank card networks swept away the networks' longstanding "honor all cards" rule, so that merchants accepting Visa and MasterCard credit cards could for the first time refuse the signature debit products from those brands.Wal-Mart itself famously exercised this freedom in February when it began refusing MasterCard's signature debit card.And Raza says he has heard anecdotally that as many as 500 other retailers have followed suit, though these are small merchants whose decisions have not had any impact on total signature-debit volume.The de-linking of credit and signature debit, however, meant that merchants that installed PIN debit had extra leverage with the card associations, since they had an alternative—and generally less expensive--debit card network to turn to."In many ways the merchant community is exercising its right to move to a cheaper processing alternative," says Raza.
  
  Visa, at least, may not have as much to lose from this trend as MasterCard.With PIN debit transactions growing at a faster rate than signature-debit payments, Raza says it's only a matter of time before Visa begins promoting its PIN debit network, Interlink, more aggressively."Some of those signature debit transactions that get displaced will migrate to Interlink," he predicts.

• 
  NACM E-News - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 11/12/2001    Last Visited: 8/9/2002  

  According to Ali Raza, a Senior Consultant at S&A, "These changes have exacerbated the traditional risks in banking and led to a new focus on some of the evolving risk areas.Banks are learning that it is incumbent upon them to adopt a broader risk focus."In addition to the traditional banking risks, S&A's Study found that banks must now focus on Market Risk, Operational Risk, Reputational Risk, Legal Risk, the Risk of Obsolescence and Integration Risk.
  
  Market Risk: In addition to the traditional market risks such as adverse movements in market rates, or prices, such as interest rates, foreign exchange rates, or equity prices, Market Risk now includes credit risk, trading risk, country risk, and political/country risk.Operational Risk: The risk of direct or indirect losses resulting from inadequate or failed processes, people, and systems or from external events.The most important types of operational risk involve breakdowns in internal controls and corporate governance.

• 
  News - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/3/2006    Last Visited: 9/3/2006  

  Much of the fate of that deal could be determined by how binding the language is in the contract MBNA signed with AmEx, says Ali Raza, a consultant with Atlanta-based Speer & Associates Inc."Most of those contracts have a clause that says you can terminate the deal if there is a change of ownership," he says.While Raza expects BofA will get plenty of subtle pressure from Visa to discontinue the arrangement, he notes the deal could "give BofA another brand to satisfy different consumer demands."
  ...
  But it is not a given that BofA will automatically rebrand the cards with the Visa logo, Raza says."There will likely be pressure to switch the cards to Visa, but BofA could see the advantages of offering multiple brands," he says.

• 
  Speer and Associates - Executive Management - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/6/2008    Last Visited: 6/6/2008  

  Ali RazaExecutive Vice President

Page:  1 2