The Finanser’s Week: 9th January 2022 – 16th January 2022

This week’s main blog discussions include:

How a bank’s IT systems allowed £100m a day of fraud

NatWest, formerly Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), is a good example of a bank with rubbish IT. This was illustrated when I spotted the headline: NatWest fined $300 million for money laundering. They didn’t do the money laundering, but a number of accounts – specifically …

The relationship between process and technical debt

Many financial processes were created centuries ago. When technology arrived, we automated those historical processes to make them more efficient. We didn’t necessarily focus upon how to make them more effective, as the focus was on how to reduce costs. Years later, we are paying …

FinTech investment grew 183% in 2021

I took a contrarian view and said that FinTech investments worldwide would plateau in 2022. Interestingly, 2021 was a record year. Just looking at the figures from Innovate Finance, you can see things were still on fire: Sector bounces back from pandemic – 217% overall …

Will the euro collapse and disappear tomorrow?

There has been a continual debate about the euro and the future of Europe. When the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016, I was absolutely mortified. I didn’t think it would happen, but it has happened. It’s a messy divorce, but the divorce …

Can Elon Musk solve world hunger?

The worlds’ rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Does it always have to be that way? In 2020, the world's super-rich enjoyed a record rise in their wealth. Here's how the world's wealthiest can put their money to use

This week's main headlines include:

• What are the lessons from history for digital currency?
• Cloud giants may resist Bank of England’s resilience tests
• Fifth of people not visited bank branch since before pandemic – survey
• Bank of England urges banks to quantify climate risks properly
• Big Banks Band Together to Measure and Manage Climate Risk
• Revolut launches as a bank in 10 Western European countries
• Checkout.com hits US$40bn valuation after raising $1bn
• Six banks allow customers to do this one thing which could put them at risk of fraud
• ‘Worrying security flaws’ may expose online banking customers to fraud – Which?
• UK fintech sees record investment in 2021 following pandemic slump in 2020
• Get the data, from Monzo to Razorpay: The 10 biggest fintech deals of December
• Technology Is Only One Piece of True Digital Transformation in Banking