The Asian Banker Journal

October 31, 2005

MasterCard International launches executive insights series

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MasterCard International today announced the launch of Executive Insights, a thought leadership series delivered by senior MasterCard executives and industry experts designed to provide financial institutions with valuable insights into the banking and payments industries. The first live event and a series of webcasts will focus on retail banking and maximizing the debit opportunity.

The first event is titled, The Power of Insight: Knowing Your Customers, Growing Your Business, and features best-selling author and renowned speaker Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D, president and CEO of Age Wave, the country's preeminent think tank on the boomer generation. Dychtwald is a psychologist, gerontologist, consultant to business and government. He also is the author of 12 books including Age Wave and his latest, The Power Years.

Dychtwald will present emerging shifts in the demographic landscape. He will be joined by Richard G. Lyons Jr., senior vice president, MasterCard International, who will address the business implications of these demographic shifts for retail banking and how to take advantage of the opportunities they represent.

In this special MasterCard event, Dychtwald will explore how the age wave is reshaping our lives, families, businesses and government and how the financial services marketplace will be transformed in the process.

Issues to be addressed include:

How the longevity revolution is causing yesterday's linear model of aging/living to be replaced by a new cyclic life paradigm in which we're seeing the proliferation of multiple careers, lifelong education and the postponement of old age.

Are people seeking traditional retirement security or a new type of financial and lifestyle freedom?

What financial ingredients are critical to assure freedom and security in maturity?

Meet the four retiree segments the Ageless Explorers, the Comfortably Contents, the Live for Todays and the Sick and Tireds. Learn how each group is doing, how they feel about their lives, their prospects for fulfilling their hopes and dreams and what role financial planning has played in getting them to where they are today.

Leaving a legacy: how to play an important role in the largest wealth transfer in history.

Next year, the first wave of Baby Boomers turns 60. Seventy-eight million more will follow over the next 20 years, accounting for the largest single population shift in the history of America, commented Dychtwald. More importantly, more than 70 percent of the money in the consumer banking system will be controlled by a group of people who have no intention of sitting idly on the front porch. Instead they envision their power years as a time for new beginnings and personal reinvention and they will be starting small businesses and second careers. Clearly, they represent a growing yet largely untapped opportunity for the banking and payments industry.

MasterCard is committed to sharing best practices and business intelligence with our debit card-issuing financial institutions, Lyons said. This event will provide them with insights into the role electronic payments play in developing a deeper understanding of their consumers, whether they are Baby Boomers, Mass Affluent, or Small Business decision-makers, and how this knowledge is vital in acquiring, retaining and growing valuable customer relationships.