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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There’s a lot of debate about the big axis of power today: America and China (ed: what about India?). Both have massive tech giants and both have super economies. Where does this leave Europe? It’s interesting for me in that most of the discussion is that Europe and Eurocrats strangle all innovation with regulation or,…
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We are looking at a possible million humans or more living on Mars by 2050. How will they live? What will they be doing? Is it going to be easy to travel between Earth and Mars? Are the communication systems going to work to keep connected with families on both planets? Why would you want…
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I talked a bit about Amazon and Apple teaming up to develop AI strategies to compete and beat Alphabet/Google and Microsoft the other day. It got me thinking: why are we talking the American Big Tech giants when there are several Big Tech Asian giants namely Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and NVIDIA themselves. What are their AI…
Read More
We are all happy to use an interior designer, but would you be happy using a DNA designer? What we mean by this is the obvious evolution of fertility treatments, such as IVF, evolving into specific DNA structures of change and even babies born out of womb through artificial gestation. It is probable that, by…
Read More
I talked a bit about Amazon and Apple teaming up to develop AI strategies to compete and beat Alphabet/Google and Microsoft the other day. It got me thinking: why are we talking the American Big Tech giants when there are several Big Tech Asian giants namely Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and NVIDIA themselves. What are their AI…
Read MoreI’ve talked about how the financial system can either aid or abet the challenge of climate change – so much so that I even wrote a book about it called Digital for Good. This means that there is a future where someone has to work to protect our environment who I call the Environmental Defender….
Read MoreBack in 2012 I argued that there would soon be mobile wallet wars. In 2014, I speculated that there would be mobile wallet wars but that it was early days. In 2020, I still noted that mobile wallets were pretty awful. Today, it is clear that the mobile wallet is the core of the customer relationship and competitive…
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I wrote in April about debanking my bank before they debanked me, which is a theme regularly popping up in UK media. The debanking process is where, without notice, a bank decides that your account is suspicious and blocks it for no apparent reason. You cannot get it reopened and often find it difficult to…
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I’ve been surprised recently by non-stop news updates about how well Revolut is doing. From getting its UK banking license, which was suspect for a while, to achieving the milestone of 50 million customers, 2024 has been a pretty phenomenal year for the company. Then they announce next years plans which include AI-driven finance, super…
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Last week, a report was released by the UK’s Parliamentary committee saying that the UK regulatory body for financial conduct – the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) – is “incompetent at best, dishonest at worst” and that it has a “toxic culture”. This is based upon an investigation of the FCA which took almost three years…
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I got another good question in my banking session the other day: AI disruption will be transformational to banks revenue generation and cost optimisation. How do you see the people and organisational model of banks developing as they harness its benefits? This is a tough one, but the answer is clearly that everything that can…
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Fifteen years ago, I did a major survey into the use of cloud computing in financial services. Bear in mind this was really early days, and the results were quite nebulous. The main headline was that cloud computing needs better definition to succeed: The research report, which encompasses the views of over 230 financial professionals…
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I was interested in this speech given the other day by Patrick T. Harker, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, because its title was: Fintech, AI, and the Changing Financial Landscape The speech is broad, and focuses upon the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to the financial…
Read MoreBack in 2012 I argued that there would soon be mobile wallet wars. In 2014, I speculated that there would be mobile wallet wars but that it was early days. In 2020, I still noted that mobile wallets were pretty awful. Today, it is clear that the mobile wallet is the core of the customer relationship and competitive…
Read MoreLast week, a report was released by the UK’s Parliamentary committee saying that the UK regulatory body for financial conduct – the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) – is “incompetent at best, dishonest at worst” and that it has a “toxic culture”. This is based upon an investigation of the FCA which took almost three years…
Read MoreI got another good question in my banking session the other day: AI disruption will be transformational to banks revenue generation and cost optimisation. How do you see the people and organisational model of banks developing as they harness its benefits? This is a tough one, but the answer is clearly that everything that can…
Read More
I was recently asked: Where are the boundaries of digitalisation (are there any)? We all would have different answers to this one, but there are boundaries to digitalisation. The main boundary is where technology is replacing the human, rather than augmenting humanity. I blogged about that last year: AI should augment the human and automate…
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I know that my blog is meant to focus upon business, finance and technology, but every now and again you start asking existential questions like: What is time? Why do we have borders? What is money? Do we live in the matrix? So, I thought I would address these questions. What is time? Time is…
Read MoreFifteen years ago, I did a major survey into the use of cloud computing in financial services. Bear in mind this was really early days, and the results were quite nebulous. The main headline was that cloud computing needs better definition to succeed: The research report, which encompasses the views of over 230 financial professionals…
Read More
Last week, McKinsey released their latest podcast and the title caught my eye: Transforming to an AI-powered finance function It’s a really interesting chat between OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar and McKinsey senior partner Lareina Yee on the podcast At the Edge. Listening to it (and there’s also a transcript), here are a few highlights of Sarah’s thoughts,…
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Unsurprisingly, after a major election that will influence the Western world, the election of Donald Trump resulted in a flood of PR releases and contacts to tell me how this will influence the economy, Europe and the world. Some even got more specific, talking about how it will change fintech and cryptocurrencies. Let’s take a…
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Building on my blog the other day about BLIK (the Polish digital wallet), I just got two really insightful pieces of analysis on European payments – talking of a payments vision – from PWC in a report on Europe’s open banking vision and Jeremy Light, a good friend formerly of Accenture, on EU wallets. Here’s the…
Read MoreAs someone involved in cryptocurrencies early in the game, you would speculate that I’m now a billionaire. Yes, I did invest in bitcoin in 2013 when it was just $60. Now, it’s hovering around the $100,000 per bitcoin mark (and ETH just broke $4,000). Congrats if you made the investment ten years ago. Nevertheless, during…
Read MoreI wrote in April about debanking my bank before they debanked me, which is a theme regularly popping up in UK media. The debanking process is where, without notice, a bank decides that your account is suspicious and blocks it for no apparent reason. You cannot get it reopened and often find it difficult to…
Read More
It seems like most of the news this week has been about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Between Donald Trump, a crypto convert, and Elon Musk, a crypto enthusiast, everyone is now getting in on the game. By way of example, here’s a few headlines in the past week: There’s another big winner of the US election:…
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It’s fascinating how things change. Donald Trump is President-Elect and bitcoin’s price soars to over $80,000. Quite predictable as he will be the crypto-President, as mentioned in July, but maybe a forecast of a bitcoin price of $100,000+ by year-end is not so outrageous after all. Then, what intrigued me, is two stories. The first…
Read MoreUnsurprisingly, after a major election that will influence the Western world, the election of Donald Trump resulted in a flood of PR releases and contacts to tell me how this will influence the economy, Europe and the world. Some even got more specific, talking about how it will change fintech and cryptocurrencies. Let’s take a…
Read More
It intrigues me how quickly our world of money is changing from crypto to fintech to BaaS to infinity and beyond. The question that constantly sits in the back of my mind is how to regulate all this stuff to maintain trust? From Synapse to FTX to Beenz to Boo, how can the regulator keep…
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I just got the latest Finch Capital report on The State of Fintech 2024. Many of us think that fintech valuations and investments have gone through the floor, and this reports make clear that it depends where you are. The UK is doing well, as is the Netherlands, whilst Ireland has seen a 90% drop…
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There’s a quote I often use from John Oliver that cryptocurrency is “everything you don’t understand about money combined with everything you don’t understand about computers”. That was 2018. It’s now 2024, and things are a lot worse. I’ve blogged about the confusion of money recently, and it is not only the fragmentation of money…
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I find it hard to believe that some commentators are still talking about BaaS and the great unbundling of banking. The reason? Well that was the conversation we were having fifteen years ago. Today, the discussion is much more around embedded banking that is intelligent, ubiquitous, everywhere, anywhere, anytime … except that I was having…
Read MoreThere’s a lot of debate about the big axis of power today: America and China (ed: what about India?). Both have massive tech giants and both have super economies. Where does this leave Europe? It’s interesting for me in that most of the discussion is that Europe and Eurocrats strangle all innovation with regulation or,…
Read MoreWe are looking at a possible million humans or more living on Mars by 2050. How will they live? What will they be doing? Is it going to be easy to travel between Earth and Mars? Are the communication systems going to work to keep connected with families on both planets? Why would you want…
Read MoreI talked a bit about Amazon and Apple teaming up to develop AI strategies to compete and beat Alphabet/Google and Microsoft the other day. It got me thinking: why are we talking the American Big Tech giants when there are several Big Tech Asian giants namely Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and NVIDIA themselves. What are their AI…
Read MoreWe are all happy to use an interior designer, but would you be happy using a DNA designer? What we mean by this is the obvious evolution of fertility treatments, such as IVF, evolving into specific DNA structures of change and even babies born out of womb through artificial gestation. It is probable that, by…
Read MoreAs someone involved in cryptocurrencies early in the game, you would speculate that I’m now a billionaire. Yes, I did invest in bitcoin in 2013 when it was just $60. Now, it’s hovering around the $100,000 per bitcoin mark (and ETH just broke $4,000). Congrats if you made the investment ten years ago. Nevertheless, during…
Read MoreI’ve talked about how the financial system can either aid or abet the challenge of climate change – so much so that I even wrote a book about it called Digital for Good. This means that there is a future where someone has to work to protect our environment who I call the Environmental Defender….
Read More
There are two things that came up recently which made me stop and think. The first is the recreation of Elvis Presley through AI who will now perform every night in London in 2025, dead and on stage looking live; the second is a new podcast series created around Michael Parkinson, the legendary chat show…
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We’ve seen Microsoft absorb ChatGPT and the impact that has made on search. Google responded by integrating their Gemini AI into search. But search was just the start. AI is taking over every nook and cranny of the internet and life. A great example is how chatbots seem to have more empathy than human bots:…
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Continuing Sophie Deen’s series around jobs of the future, we come to the Curator. I’ve talked about the Curator before – seven years ago in fact – and it’s a role that replaces the CIO. It is all about curating the multiverse of providers, platforms and possibilities in the ecosystem of the network we live…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Deutsche Bank and Crypto.com sign corporate banking deal Ukraine’s Mobile Frontline Bank Dodges Shells To Deliver Cash A new dawn for Metro Bank? – Investors’ Chronicle Goldman Sachs exits Net-Zero Banking Alliance | ESG Dive Ant International Expands Fintech Reach with AI Push | FinTech Magazine The evolution of…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Why the Coolest Job in Tech Might Actually Be in a Bank – WSJ The fintech winter continues to chill the outlook for local firms, says KPMG — Capital Brief Revolut Aims to Become New Zealand’s First Global Digital Bank European Banks Face A Mandatory Digital Euro. Now what?…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Syria: Chaos in Damascus as rebels set fire to buildings and loot bank | Express.co.uk Jack Ma makes rare speech at Ant Group’s 20th anniversary, predicts AI-driven future | South China Morning Post NAB to bring in huge change that will completely transform the way millions of Aussies access…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Is it debanking or derisking? I wrote in April about debanking my bank before they debanked me, which is a theme regularly popping up in UK media. The debanking process is where, without notice, a bank decides that your account is suspicious and blocks it for no apparent…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Bitcoin hits $100,000: what next for the booming cryptocurrency? – BBC News Bitcoin hits $100,000 mark. When is best time to buy cryptocurrency? Man who lost £500 million bitcoin fortune to bin day is fighting for a chance to find it in court, after more than 10 years in…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Operation Destabilise: NCA disrupts $multi-billion Russian money laundering networks with links to, drugs, ransomware and espionage, resulting in 84 arrests – National Crime Agency NCA Disrupts Multi-Billion Dollar Russian Money Laundering Network – Chainalysis Blog Crypto Update: UK Government Outlines Its Approach to Digital Asset Regulation Digital bank Zopa…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Britain’s ‘get the f*ckers’ attitude has hurt banking, warns former Barclays chief Japan’s Nomura bank boss takes 30% voluntary pay cut after worker tries to kill customer | Banking | The Guardian Property tycoon given death penalty over £34,000,000,000 bank fraud | Metro News Ally Langdon confronts Commonwealth Bank…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Crypto, FinTech Cry Foul Over Debanking — Could Issue Be Risk? Why Is XRP Going Up? Ripple’s Token Surges for 6 Consecutive Days, Hits $2.50 Fintech must focus on finance as well as tech – Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, former CEO, Virgin Money – UKTN Truong My Lan: Vietnamese tycoon…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Is it debanking or derisking? I wrote in April about debanking my bank before they debanked me, which is a theme regularly popping up in UK media. The debanking process is where, without notice, a bank decides that your account is suspicious and blocks it for no apparent…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … When everything is digitised, what do humans do? I was recently asked: Where are the boundaries of digitalisation (are there any)? We all would have different answers to this one, but there are boundaries to digitalisation. The main boundary is where technology is replacing the human, rather than…
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions included … Tally-ho! No, it’s not exciting fox hounds – it’s all to do with accounting I thought I had just found a new podcast called Money by David Walliams, the famous British comedian and children’s author. Then I found out it is by David McWilliams, the less famous Irish economist…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … Will the new America be based upon a digital dollar that is stable? It’s fascinating how things change. Donald Trump is President-Elect and bitcoin’s price soars to over $80,000. Quite predictable as he will be the crypto-President, as mentioned in July, but maybe a forecast of a bitcoin…
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions include: What does Trump’s victory mean for banks, tech, fintech and the future? Unsurprisingly, after a major election that will influence the Western world, the election of Donald Trump resulted in a flood of PR releases and contacts to tell me how this will influence the economy, Europe and the world….
Read MoreThis week’s blog discussions include … Banks make millions from the most vulnerable As mentioned, I’m dealing with my mother’s financial affairs as she reaches end of life, and I’m finding it incredibly frustrating. The process is that there first needs to be a Power of Attorney in place. Luckily, she saw that coming and…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … The Lloyds Bank Turd If you’re having breakfast or eating right now, please do not read this blog entry. I really didn’t want to write this blog, but it’s too irresistible to ignore. In fact, I cannot believe I haven’t seen this before as, the other day, guess…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Is 2025 Meta’s nemesis year? Thinking about the Big Tech firms, most of them are enabling commerce. Amazon and Apple are building specific structures to make buying and selling easy. But one company is enabling fraud, scams and criminal activities. Meta. Meta runs Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Why are fintechs worth more than banks? I just got the latest Finch Capital report on The State of Fintech 2024. Many of us think that fintech valuations and investments have gone through the floor, and this reports make clear that it depends where you are. The UK…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … US banks invest three times more in tech than European banks I got an interesting question in my recent banking presentation: US banks have spent far more on technology than banks in Europe – will European banks ever be able to catch-up? It is true that American banks…
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Global 100 - 2024 Winner
Chris Skinner - Financial Markets Advisor of the Year - The Finanser - UK 2023
Best Financial Markets Advisor of the Year 2023
