The Finanser’s Week: September 21st – September 27th 2026

This week’s main blog discussions include …

How many employees does it take to create $1 billion of value?

I was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers, revenues, profits, assets and market capitalisation. We argue about whether fintech is really disrupting banking, whether the challengers will…

Banks trust AI … banks don’t trust AI

There is something wonderfully contradictory happening in banking right now illustrated by the main news headlines I picked out yesterday. Banks are racing to put artificial intelligence into the heart of their operations because it makes them faster, cheaper and more productive, while at the same time warning their customers that artificial intelligence creates new…

Huawei’s Transform Magazine starring …

I asked AI to summarise the latest edition of Huawei’s financial magazine called Transform, and this is what it came back with. I think AI is not objective … Transform Issue 27: Banking’s Butterfly Moment The most striking contribution in Huawei’s Transform Issue 27 comes from Chris Skinner, who argues that banking is moving beyond…

Q: Could AI kill a bank? A: Yes.

Apparently, artificial intelligence is going to kill us all. Well, maybe, because this is no longer just a warning coming from science-fiction writers or people standing outside Silicon Valley carrying placards. Some of the people building the world's most powerful artificial intelligence systems are openly discussing the possibility that the technology they are creating could eventually destroy humanity.

When the machines go shopping

MasterCard just produced an interesting range of views about the future of shopping and money using visionaries like my friend Theo Lau, who alerted me to the report. Download the report here. A quick summary. We have spent the last years talking about artificial intelligence as though the big change is that we will have…

Did #Brexit deliver?

Ten years ago, Britain voted to leave the European Union and, looking back at the extraordinary arguments surrounding that decision, it is worth asking a straightforward question: was Brexit worth it? I remember the arguments well.

Chris Skinner Author Avatar

Chris M Skinner

Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...