Welcome to The Finanser by Chris Skinner. The Finanser discusses all things FinTech, finance, banking, technology and, most importantly, the future. To make an enquiry about having Chris write or speak for you, here’s an illustration of his presentations … … Chris Skinner has regularly forecast the changes in finance driven by technology. He is…
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I’m a firm believer that banks rarely invest to drive revenue and elevate customer service. But I recently hosted a roundtable discussion in London with Appian, a process automation platform company, where leaders from mainstream and challenger banks in the UK gathered to discuss the challenges facing financial institutions when adopting new technology. One of…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … Will Silicon Valley Bank kill the FinTech industry? “When you’re not working, what do you do to de-stress?” was the last question Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)*, took at an investor conference on Tuesday last week. “Cycling is my advice,” he replied. Three days later…
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Welcome to this week’s FU, where we talked about the week that was, and what a week it was. Lots of bank failures and a possibility of some new banks. Bank of America were one of the winners this week whilst First Republic Bank were a possible loser, until they were thrown a last minute…
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People fear banking collapses and, with five in a week, is this contagion? In the last few days Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic, Railsr and Credit Suisse have failed. Technically they are still alive but, realistically, they flat-lined. Is this a financial crisis? No. Each bank had different issues and so I thought…
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Things we’re reading today include … UBS agrees ’emergency rescue’ of Credit Suisse UBS takeover of Credit Suisse: Embattled bank’s chairman describes ‘historic, sad and very challenging’ day Bank of England statement: Credit Suisse Credit Suisse: Bank rescue damages Switzerland’s reputation for stability New York Community Bank to buy failed Signature Bank in £2.2 billion…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Will Silicon Valley Bank kill the FinTech industry? “When you’re not working, what do you do to de-stress?” was the last question Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)*, took at an investor conference on Tuesday last week. “Cycling is my advice,” he replied. Three days later…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Credit Suisse takes $54bn loan from Swiss central bank after share price plunge US banks launch $30bn rescue of First Republic to stem spiraling crisis Banks Borrow $164.8 Billion From Fed in Rush to Backstop Liquidity Bank rescues ease crisis fears but investors worry it’s not enough Be serious,…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Asia markets fall as global banking fears widen Credit Suisse to borrow up to $54bn from Swiss central bank ‘A very different type of bank’: SVB’s culture in focus after collapse Crypto-friendly Signature Bank was facing criminal probe over money laundering concerns ahead of collapse Signature Bank’s Prospective Buyers…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include: Half of all fintech firms introduce hiring freeze Credit Suisse warns of ‘material weaknesses’ in financial reporting BoA gets $15 billion of deposits after SVB failure Signature Bank faced criminal probe ahead of its collapse Banks are designed to fail — and they do The ‘Big Brother’ bank using a…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Silicon Valley Bank collapse: Global financial stocks lose $456 billion amid contagion fears The Silicon Valley Bank Collapse, Contagion, and Containment Silicon Valley Bank’s demise disrupts the disruptors in tech Bank rule fight looms in Washington in aftermath of SVB collapse Signature Bank Collapse Sends Shockwaves Through the Broadway…
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I’m a firm believer that banks rarely invest to drive revenue and elevate customer service. But I recently hosted a roundtable discussion in London with Appian, a process automation platform company, where leaders from mainstream and challenger banks in the UK gathered to discuss the challenges facing financial institutions when adopting new technology. One of…
Read More
I often return to a theme: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? After the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank during the past week, it begs the question: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? After losing money on MtGox ten years ago: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? With the failure of FTX and Terra-Luna: where’s…
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“When you’re not working, what do you do to de-stress?” was the last question Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)*, took at an investor conference on Tuesday last week. “Cycling is my advice,” he replied. Three days later he was on his bike as his bank went into receivership. You’ve probably seen a…
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Part of the reason why I started debating the point about bank branches is that there are places where you cannot find one for love or money. In many places in the UK now, customers are being forced to make an hour long round trip to get cash or pay in a cheque. Some face a…
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For as long as I can remember, we have had a debate around whether, to be a retailer, you need stores? As a retail bank, do you need branches? The predictions from the early 2000’s have been that branches and stores will close. It’s certainly true that many have. I’ve blogged about this often and probably…
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Yesterday, I stated that most banks will not disappear. Today, I’m in the other side of the ring and saying that most banks will disappear. They won’t disappear as banks. They will just disappear as something we think about. Banking will become invisible. The industry likes to talk about embedded banking, a term that is…
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Five years ago, Gartner published a report stating that 80 percent of financial institutions would disappear by 2030. Most banks will be made irrelevant by 2030 – Gartner Within 12 years’ time, 80% of financial firms will either go out of business or be rendered irrelevant by new competition, changing customer behaviour and advancements in…
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I love it when there’s a case study about animal behaviours. Bearing in mind that apes are our closest relations, when scientists try experiments to see how they behave towards money, it is fascinating. This is something I’ve blogged about many times before, with a favourite example being the Capuchin monkeys who discovered that they…
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I just had a new dawning, but maybe not. The realisation was that the decentralisation of everything – finance, money, government, service, chat – is all down to technology. Centralisation of everything is all down to physicality. It’s like the dichotomy between the State, which is analogue, and Society, which is now digital. This is…
Read More“When you’re not working, what do you do to de-stress?” was the last question Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)*, took at an investor conference on Tuesday last week. “Cycling is my advice,” he replied. Three days later he was on his bike as his bank went into receivership. You’ve probably seen a…
Read More
I just picked up a long and fascinating article on TechCrunch this week. Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, but they interview seven leading VC investors in FinTech and asked a whole variety of questions: Many people are calling this a downturn. How has your investment thesis changed over the last year? Are you still closing…
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The fintech bloodbath continues as three really interesting articles came across my desk last week (we discussed them on Fintech Uncut in case you missed it). The first, from Reuters, talked about the valuation of Stripe, my favourite FinTech. Why are they my favourite? Because they expanded massively from a new entrant in 2011 to…
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Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about money. I’ve learned about its creation, usage and operation. I’ve learned that it wasn’t invented to replace bartering. I’ve learned a lot. Here’s a few facts about money … The Barter Economy was a myth We believe that money replaced bartering with each other, but that’s just…
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I’ve said that my old bank is deficient for some time. Specifically, no alerts of transactions so I have to open the app to see when something is paid; no detail of transactions, just something like ABC CORP TX 3201984 on my statement; zero detail about where I’m spending money, just a date and a…
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I blogged the other day about a decade of FinTech failures, but FinTech is not failing, it’s flourishing as demonstrated by the numbers. For example I took note of Innovate Finance’s analysis of FinTech 2022 a month ago. The key headlines are: The total capital invested into FinTech globally reached $92 billion in 2022, a…
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Isn’t the message of the start-up world to fail fast and pivot? Grant Easterbrook, a fintech consultant and former founder of Go Forward, writes on Techcrunch about four areas of FinTech that didn’t live up to the hype and, in his words, failed. I was intrigued by this, as I don’t think any part of…
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I got this excellent update from FT Partners and felt compelled to share. What it should make you realise is that African Nations are leap-frogging the world. Enjoy! Executive Summary: FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and internet penetration continue to accelerate, financial services in many African markets are bypassing traditional banking…
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Just when you thought Fintech Uncut (FU for short) was quiet, we are back and louder than ever. Here’s to a 2023 of FU! There was a lot of angst this week, due to toxic cultures, relationships and losses – sadly just another week in Fintech and Financial Services … Here are the links to…
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A headline jumped out at me the other day: World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee calls crypto ‘dangerous’ and likens it to gambling The key points he made in an interview with CNBC are: Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, called cryptocurrency “dangerous” and likened it to gambling. Discussing the future of…
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Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange preferred by many, was interviewed by Bloomberg[1]. I’ve selected a number of key comments he made, as this feeds well into my arguments about DeFi (Decentralised Finance) versus CeFi (Centralised Finance). All commentary below is direct from Brian: … One in five households have used crypto, about 50…
Read MoreI often return to a theme: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? After the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank during the past week, it begs the question: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? After losing money on MtGox ten years ago: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? With the failure of FTX and Terra-Luna: where’s…
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It made me smile when watching Billions during an exchange between Chuck Rhoades (the Attorney General) and a bitcoin miner in Episode 1 of Series 5 (nerdy). Bitcoin miner: "What's the dollar backed by, since we went off the gold standard?" Legislator: "Roads, the military, industry, the credit of the federal government, that sort of…
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The Financial Stability Board (FSB) are getting more and more active about stablecoins and crypto assets. In a letter to G20 ministers published yesterday, FSB Chair Klaas Knot Many said that many existing stablecoins would not meet the “high-level” recommendations to be set by global standard setters like the FSB. This is related to the…
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Paxos, a company focused upon stablecoins, has been issued with a notice they are to be sued by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). Sources cited by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) say the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to sue Paxos for violating investor…
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I posted a quote the other day on social media, remembering the old bank robber in America, Willie Sutton. You may not have heard of him, as it is almost a century ago but, during his forty-year robbery career, he stole an estimated $2 million. Today that would be around $35 million. He then spent…
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I’ve enjoyed the rise and rise of the Libertarian dream of ungoverned finance. In 2022, facing the reckoning, it’s now quite funny to see the Libertarians saying we need regulations. As I’ve always said: you cannot have money without governance. The challenge here however is what governance? Do we need central banks and nations to…
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Just when you think that cryptocurrencies are unregulated and ridiculous, the industry spends four years to work out a set of standards to ensure trust. Who would have thought it? Global cryptoasset standards This set of global principles of good practice in the Global Cryptoasset Standards has been developed to provide a common set of…
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I’ve been subscribed to Make My Money Matter for a while. It’s a movement started by Comic Relief co-founder Richard Curtis – he of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame – and is trying to put pressure on pension funds to influence financial institutions to only invest in things that protect our future, as in…
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Last year I invited Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, to write a monthly column explaining her motivations and methods. You can read those, and other climate and ESG related blogs, here. One specific column she contributed was asking how they could justify breaking bank windows. Extinction Rebellion lobbied HSBC and Barclays Bank specifically in…
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I was surprised to be voted one of the leading thinkers on Climate Change by Thinkers360 … Delighted to find myself as one of the top thinkers about #ClimateChange 2022 from @thinkers360https://t.co/gKj0JwICSZ — Chris Skinner (@Chris_Skinner) January 3, 2023 It’s probably based on my last book, and I don’t think of myself as a climate…
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I haven’t written about Green Finance for a while, but then saw this over on Bloomberg and couldn’t resist sharing. The need for a global greenwashing framework by Tim Quinson, Bloomberg Greenwashing may be the biggest risk to the future of ESG investing, but there’s no firm agreement on what it means in a legal…
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I’ve been talking a lot about DeFi, CeFi and HyFi, and someone said: what about ReFi? ReFi? What’s that? Well, ReFi is all about Regenerative Finance, a system to rebuild Earth. Therefore, I’m pleased to share a second post by Letty Prados. Last month, I shared her introduction about ReFi. Here is Part II! Exploring Regenerative Tokenomics. If you…
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The biggest banks in the world are regularly advertising their green credentials, whilst killing the world. They claim to invest in green projects, which are trivial to the amounts they are lending to companies creating emissions and destruction. It’s kind of like a family where you say aren’t we good and then spending the evenings…
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For those who follow my thinking, you will know that the latest theme is how can we use technology to make the world a better place (if you don’t, read Digital for Good). The themes are about ESG, climate change, purpose and more, but it came home to me when thinking about children. Children are…
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I listened to the new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, speaking at her Conservative Party conference. She mentioned “growth” 29 times. I know what it is like to live somewhere that isn’t feeling the benefits of economic growth … Low growth isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. Low growth means lower wages, fewer opportunities and…
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I’ve been talking a lot about DeFi, CeFi and HyFi, and someone said: what about ReFi? ReFi? What’s that? Well, ReFi is all about Regenerative Finance, a system to rebuild Earth. Therefore, having shined a light on Gail Bradbrook’s thinking (she’s co-founder of Extinction Rebellion) for the last months, I’m pleased to introduce you to…
Read MoreI often return to a theme: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? After the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank during the past week, it begs the question: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? After losing money on MtGox ten years ago: where’s my guarantee? Where’s my backup? With the failure of FTX and Terra-Luna: where’s…
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Predictions about banking in the future After I posted my banks disappear post, Glenn Stanford replied to me on LinkedIn with a link to this: A history of the future of banking: predictions and outcomes by Maria Gloria Cobas and Larry R. Mote, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and James A. Wilcox, Haas School of…
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There’s that line in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others It always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, as it would be nice if we had an egalitarian world where everyone was equal … but it’s never going to happen. This struck me when I was…
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I spend every day thinking about tomorrow. I’m now kind of troubled about tomorrow when I think about yesterday. Many things of old were great. The fact they’ve all gone or are going is maybe an issue. The fact that vinyl disappeared, replaced by CDs and now streaming was something. Yet, it’s weird, as it…
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A long time ago – so long ago that most people reading this weren’t born or had just started school – I said to my boss that cash machines were dead. At the time, I worked for NCR which stands for National Cash Registers, the cash machine company. The comment was not a popular one….
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I often refer to Bernard Lietaer, my late friend, and his work on community currencies. You can read his book for free here. It got me into a whole load of other areas from the Long Now to time as a currency. Have you thought about time as a currency? Maybe my favourite example of…
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Talking about time, I got a nudge from Bloomberg about an artist in time. The story is about Max Büsser who, with his band of revolutionaries, made products they wanted themselves and built a huge fandom on the way. What’s the product? A wristwatch. Max worked for luxury jeweller Harry Winston but was unhappy. He…
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One of my favourite series, Black Mirror, is about to return to Netflix for Series 6. So, it made me think about the future world and thought I would give an outline of an episode. I’m no screenwriter but … you never know. Black Mirror, Season 7, Episode 3: The Office I’m living in a…
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I received a bunch of interesting pings this week, but a few stood out. The main one was about the climate impact of crypto: Ethereum has managed to massively decrease its annual CO2 emissions as it has moved to a proof-of-stake blockchain. In 2021, it was creating a huge 21.95 million tons of CO2, which…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … Will Silicon Valley Bank kill the FinTech industry? “When you’re not working, what do you do to de-stress?” was the last question Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)*, took at an investor conference on Tuesday last week. “Cycling is my advice,” he replied. Three days later…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … What’s hot and what’s not in FinTech? I just picked up a long and fascinating article on TechCrunch this week. Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, but they interview seven leading VC investors in FinTech and asked a whole variety of questions: Many people are calling this a downturn….
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Most banks will disappear (Part One) Five years ago, Gartner published a report stating that 80 percent of financial institutions would disappear by 2030. Most banks will be made irrelevant by 2030 – Gartner Within 12 years’ time, 80% of financial firms will either go out of business…
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions included … What has the government ever done for us? It made me smile when watching Billions during an exchange between Chuck Rhoades (the Attorney General) and a bitcoin miner in Episode 1 of Series 5 (nerdy). Bitcoin miner: “What’s the dollar backed by, since we went off the gold standard?”…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Why the 1% will always be the 1% There’s that line in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others It always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, as it would be nice if we had an egalitarian world where everyone…
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This week’s main blog headlines include … This week’s FU! A singing quizmaster, naked customers, another UK exit on the horizon, silver foxes in the hen house plus more fintech fun and banking banter about the biggest news stories of the week. A few show notes here:- Our resident Judge, Mary, was back in the…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … FinTech in Africa: the State of the Nations I got this excellent update from FT Partners and felt compelled to share. What it should make you realise is that African Nations are leap-frogging the world. Enjoy! Executive Summary: FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and…
Read MoreHighlights and links This week’s Guest Judge (and numbers nerd) Wasim Mushtaq former Transformation Lead, Financial Markets at Standard Chartered Bank, provided full transparency of his bespoke scoring system he applied – find out how our participants fared while they spoke about Amazon, Swift, Stripe, The White Stripes, Monzo, Musk, Karaoke, Iran, Russia, Zopa and lots more…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … ISO 20022 … or is it ISO 20023 … 20024 … 20025? Anyone who has attended a Sibos conference or similar payments meeting will have heard the buzz about ISO 20022 for years. The idea is that this will unite the global banking industry with a new standard…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Just when you think that crypto has failed … Just when you think that cryptocurrencies are unregulated and ridiculous, the industry spends four years to work out a set of standards to ensure trust. Who would have thought it Has crypto failed? I’ve enjoyed the rise and rise…
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Thinkers360 Thought Leader
Best CEO of the Year UK 2022
Best Digital Finance Provider of the Year UK 2022
Best Financial Markets Adviser of the Year UK 2022
Portal to the Knowledge Base of the Financial Services Club UK 2022
Financial Markets Advisor of the Year UK 2022
Best Financial Markets Adviser of the Year UK 2022
Portal to the Knowledge Base of the Financial Services Club UK 2022
Financial Markets Advisor of the Year UK 2022
