Digital Bank

After my blog yesterday, about banks having to move from being control freaks in a proprietary operation building everything to becoming collaborative partners in an open marketplace curating everything, I was asked: “how do you make money out of curation?” It’s a good question, as marketplace curators make money very …

I was having a chat with a banking buddy who was expressing his frustration with the fact that their PSD2 developments were not going the way he wanted.  He had found a nice little FinTech start-up with a really neat Open API capability which could be used by the bank …

I just got back from the ICEEfest in Bucharest, Romania.  It’s a fantastic expo organised by Dragos Stanca and his team, and was very enjoyable even with the master of ceremonies, Jeff Leach, taking the mickey out of me.  Jeff is an actor and comedian, and spent the whole conference …

We had a great meeting of the Financial Services Club this week with guest keynote Derek White, Global Head of Customer Solutions for BBVA reporting directly to the CEO, Carlos Torres Vila.  Derek is responsible for the drive to transform the customer value proposition, including global product and design, customer …

I was invited to talk to some City folks about using data analytics for trading.  It made me pause for reflection, as I’ve been talking about analytics for trading for a long, long time.  Twenty years ago in fact. Back in the 1990s, we were taking about object oriented programming, …

I regularly blog about the same subject, namely CHANGE YOUR CORE SYSTEMS.  Banks do a great job of not listening to me, but that’s because they’ve caught themselves in Catch 22: screwed if I change them and screwed if I don’t.  How did they get into this mess and how …

I hosted a banking dinner the other night, where we were talking about the FinTech scene in this particularly vibrant and innovative country.  It was under the Chatham House Rule, so I can’t say too much about who and where this dinner was, but it did amuse me half way …

Twenty years ago, I was working on re-engineering projects.  Most of the time I was getting exasperated because the banks wouldn’t take on the big projects, like the mortgage process, as it went across too many divisions.  That’s big risk in their view, as it meant disturbing the structure of …

I recently hosted Nick Ogden, the founder of WorldPay and serial entrepreneur, at our Nordic Finance Innovation meetings in Stockholm and Oslo.  Nick is now launching the first new UK clearing bank for over 250 years called ClearBank.  I’d heard a few rumblings about ClearBank, but hadn’t really go the …

Someone made an interesting comment about Google this week: banks can attack Google’s soft underbelly. What? Google? Soft underbelly? And banks can attack it? You must be joking. The presenter (Conor McAleavey, Chief Innovatoin Officer with Leveris) went on to outline what he meant and, as he talked about it, …

I’ve written a lot about Ant and Alibaba, but not so much Tencent, even though QQ social networking in China was a hot, hot topic a few years ago.  It was the first social platform to launch its own currency and, with 300 million users, was quite interesting.  Things have …

I had an interview with .BANK domain the other day.  Here’s how it went … .BANK: In your book, The Future of Banking in a Globalised World, you explore the impact of regulatory change on the banking industry. With the move to less regulation in the U.S. almost guaranteed in …

I was chairing a conference with various speakers, when Gartner Group stood up and talked about their annual bank survey.  They found that of the senior bankers surveyed, 76% don’t believe that digitalisation will affect their business model. Gartner found 76% of banks don’t believe their business model has to …

I recently met a start-up bank.  They were depressed.  Having submitted their third proposal for the bank, the regulator was still pushing back.  This felt familiar.   Having seen so many new start-up banks in Britain, I was familiar with the start-up process.  It involves hellishly detailed documentation showing effective plans, …

I grew up in an era of Ska music with the Specials, Madness and The Selector being regulars on the University circuit.  One song that brought back memories of this era played on the radio the other day: Ghost Town. The main line repeated throughout the song is This town …