Blog Index

The main blog headlines are … Cryptocurrencies are not currencies I’ve been watching the rollercoaster ride of cryptocurrencies very carefully for the last year, and it only struck me today that these are not currencies … yet. Apart from a few novelty vendors and merchants who put bitcoin on their …

The main blog headlines are … How do you manage your digital death? I just completed one of those things that none of us like doing, making a will. I recently had a major change of circumstances in my life, and decided that I should make appropriate updates and provisions. …

The main blog headlines are … Digital banking? Isn’t that just an app? I meet a lot of senior executive teams of large banks. Some are visionary, many are committed and a large number understand that life is changing. Few understand how. I talk to them about the fintech world …

The main blog headlines are … AI and Best Execution: the Investment Bankers’ Dream Team I don’t often blog about investment banking as it bores my readers who are cool and trendy retail bankers and geeks, mainly, but keep coming back to this article about JPMorgan’s Best Execution AI engine, …

The main blog headlines are … The Big Digital Banks: JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs I was having a chat about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in banking the other day. It was an interesting conversation, although most of the examples were for customer service via Chatbots, which doesn’t impress me much. I …

I’m launching the new book Digital Human in New York on April 12 (if you want to come, register here), following on from our recent London launch. In London, I was delighted to host Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays Bank UK, and Li Wang, Head of Alipay and Ant Financial …

The main blog headlines are … What is the real difference between a challenger bank and an incumbent? I was reading about banks being average to poor at marketing, and wondered about it. Banks’ advertising generally is about either being cool or in love with you. Here are a few …

The main blog headlines are … The lies spread by bankers about cryptocurrencies I had a chat with The Financial Times the other day, and provided lots of background as to why I don’t think cryptocurrencies are the choice of criminals. The comment that was reported was the following: Chris Skinner, …

The main blog headlines are … Are you really a digital bank? (just shake it off) I was in a conversation the other day where someone asked me how I can tell if a bank is really trying to be a digital bank or just a bank. Off-the-cuff I immediately …

The main blog headlines are … Making a hash of it I’m having lots of discussions about tokenisation and cryptocurrencies, and it often boils down to hashing the data. Hashing data is taking the source information which may be your account details or card information and shortening it into a …

The main blog headlines are … 9 out of 10 blockchain trials go nowhere I just read an interesting new report from Deloitte about blockchain. They tracked the history of 86,034 blockchain projects hosted on GitHub since 2009 to pull out “key lessons” on where the blockchain industry is going …

The main blog headlines are … Excuse me, but would you like this chip in your vein or your brain? Lots of people talk a good talk about the internet of things and how my washing machine could now make purchases but my question is: what would my washing machine …

The main blog headlines are … Will platforms replace governments? I often talk about my week in Hangzhou last year, writing the case study on Ant Financial for the new book Digital Human, and particularly the words of Jack Ma on how he sees managing the Alibaba platform: Management. The …

This week’s main blog headlines are … Who has the most valuable bank brand? I just got The Banker magazine’s February issue discussing the top banking brands of the world. Timely, as I have been talking about trust and brands this week. In particular, I guess I was surprised the …

The main blog headlines are … Tencent’s WeChat Pay is AliPay major rival I’ve written a lot about Ant Financial – they’re a 30,000 word case study in my new book – mainly because they are the first payments platform to focus upon global reach for financial inclusion. That is …