Fintech

I’ve been asked the same question twice this week in two separate conferences (one in Vienna, the other in San Francisco): “how will we deal with the corruptive forces when we are all on the net?” The second questioner clarified what she meant by referencing the film Enemy of the State, where Will Smith gets…

I realised recently that my course of opinion is rather different to several other commentators and felt it worth noting where we agree and disagree.  Where I agree with most FinTech people is that: Digital replaces physical FinTech is changing banking forever Mobile is getting rid of cash You can have money without borders Where…

Ron Suber is President of Prosper, one of America’s first and largest peer-to-peer lenders. Who is the typical user of Prosper? Prosper is an online marketplace for credit that offers access to consumer loans. We focus on three types of borrowers. The first is the person who wants to consolidate high-interest debt with a loan that…

Through the years, I’ve seen a few changes in finance and technology.  We’ve seen dress-down Friday move to dress-down everyday (if you’re a Fintech firm); we’ve seen borders and barriers breaking down between ethnicity and sexual preferences; and we’ve seen globalisation of activities.  But the one thing we haven’t seen enough of is diversity of…

I was recently interviewed by Emerging Markets Review just before travelling to Korea in July.  The interview lasted a while, but stunned me when they produced the magazine with yours truly front page and centre.  Rather than saying anything more, here's the interview which you can download as a PDF if you prefer.   The global…

I’ve discovered lots of lists of Fintech unicorns.  The main list is from Jim Bruene; there's a nice list that is from a European's perspective by Bernard Lunn;  and a UK list published by me the other day.  In fact, in preparing some charts yesterday, I scraped the list of Unicorns and valuations as of last week…

I find it interesting that so many bloggers on Fintech deride the banks for being slow, clueless or stupid.  So many blogs talk about how banks don’t do this, don’t do that; fail at this, fail at that; have no idea, cannot change; are stuck in the past or have their heads up their arse. …

It’s mid-summer and quiet, but there is some interesting stuff still happening, particularly when we talk about Unicorns.  Do you believe in Unicorns? Unicorns, in technology terms, are companies with valuations of more than $1 billion that have launched since 2000.  There are quite a few of them out there including Uber, Airbnb, Twitter, Whatsapp,…