Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Financial Services: Learning the Business

I'm on a quest to find all the information I can about the Financial Service industry...specifically how it works.

I started with CardReport, which besides being pretty ugly, has some fairly useful information.

Of course it led me to much more reliable info sources.

First up, the Federal Reserve. That took me to the Government Printing Office (GPO) where I can then read in excruciating (and exciting!) detail all about Title 12, Banks and Banking.

That takes me to Regulations.gov, which I can then search through thousands of documents online (very nice). Sadly the material isn't all that exciting.

Finally, I found NACHA, The Electronic Payments Association. Here you can learn all about ACH (Automated Clearing House) payments. Joy.

I'm sure glad I've got this on my reading list. If I weren't a software developer, I'd probably go mad.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, man you're committed. (Unlike me who needs to be committed...haha...a little double-entendre for you there no extra charge :-)).
I find it tough to discipline myself to go out of my way to learn the business side of my business.
Technology alone is challenging enough, no?
What think?
Is this one of those diversify vs. focus issues you think?

oraclenerd said...

I probably should be committed as well.

I just find it helpful to know and understand what they do. My first boss possibly knew more than anyone on the business side of the house. It makes it real easy when you can do that.

Technology is definitely challenging, but I'm fairly comfortable with Oracle now that it's not as high on the list. Of course I'm constantly learning new and different things, but I know what's behind it and generally how it works. My bigger challenge is learning those things I don't know I don't know. ;)