Celent Banking team has kicked off 2011 with a bang. In addition to the flury of new reports, we hosted an industry event in London. Management of multiple channels continues to be high on many of our clients' agendas, and so we decided to focus on the multi-channel theme and called our event "Branch is Dead; Long Live the Branch." Bart Narter, Celent's Senior Vice President for Banking opened the event and introduced two distinguished guest speakers representing two sides of the argument. Batting for the "Branch is Dead" corner was Mr. Steve Townend, CEO and co-founder of MoBank, an independent mobile money management app in the UK. He asserted that "customers increasingly want and need to control their finances in ways that allows them to get on with their lives" and claimed that mobile is becoming an important financial management tool for many consumers. At the other side of the argument was Mr. Anthony Thomson, co-founder and chairman of Metro bank, the first UK high street bank to be launched since Queen Victoria ascended to the throne. Given the Metro bank's core values of convenience, service, transparency and engagement, branches are very much a cornerstone of the bank's value proposition. It was a hard act to follow for the two Celent's Senior Analysts, but Bob Meara and I accepted the challenge. Bob painted the vision of the branch of the future, describing it as a "journey, not a destination". While bank branch renewal programmes can take different shapes and forms, Bob is yet to find a bank that is happy to say "we are done". And I began with the assertion that the UK banks can do more with their investment into the online channel and use the channel for more than basic customer self-service. I shared with the audience some of the lessons from the other markets, such as how banks are re-claiming the P2P payments. However, eWise payo, UK-focused Online Banking ePayments solution represents perhaps the biggest opportunity for the UK banks to leverage their investment into online banking and Faster Payments infrastructure. Now is the right time for the UK banks to make a decision whether they should adopt such a solution. Finally, the event concluded with a mobile banking and payments panel, featuring Celent analysts from around the world, including France, Japan, China, Korea and the US, which not only affirmed the rising importance of a mobile device in financial services, but also demonstrated the diversity of development patterns around the world. And that is the value that Celent brings to its clients - a global insight based on deep local expertise in multiple markets. If you attended the event, we hope you enjoyed the presentations and networking opportunities. If not, we missed you and hope to see you at our next event - don't forget to check our website www.celent.com for the latest schedule.