Case Studies

Twenty years ago, I was doing a lot of work on business transformation and business process re-engineering (BPR). Most of the firms didn’t do transformation and viewed it as too risky. Instead they went for BPR for BPI … business process improvements. Incremental benefits rather than radical results. That was okay, but I found it…

I’m not a particularly political person. Opinionated yes. A little bit right and little bit left, maybe. Not necessarily a centrist, true. And I try to avoid writing about politically motivated movements on this blog, except when they impact the banking industry. And today is one of those days. Continuing on the Earth Day theme…

A few years ago, I was invited to talk with Equitable Bank in Canada about digital banking. Since then, they’ve launched their digital bank called EQ Bank. So I was pleased when Simon Wahl, who heads up marketing at Flinks, sent me a podcast interview with Andrew Moor, EQ Bank’s CEO, along with a transcript…

A regular discussion of mine has resurfaced in recent days: is the branch dead? Why it has returned is due to the announcement of Santander closing a fifth of its UK branch network: The Spanish-owned bank, which has one of the largest high street networks in Britain, will shut 140 branches, leaving 614 after the closures, which…

Wired are really good at writing long, wordy essays on things they find of interest. I enjoy them, but not everyone has half an hour to read their musings. Therefore, as it covers my favourite FinTech firm Stripe, here’s a 1,500 abridged version of their 16 page, 5,000 word original (which you can read here)….

As I travel around, I find different cultures fascinating Some are open, some are closed; some are welcoming, some are distrusting; some feel comfortable, some feel weird; some feel nice, some feel strict; and so on. A lot of the feeling you have about a country is a mixture of media headlines and language challenges….

I’m working on my next book already. Digital Human only came out a few months ago, and here I am off already on a new one. I’m not going to share too much about it yet, as it won’t come out for two years, except to give you some clues on its themes and content. The…

It’s September 14. It’s exactly ten years since Lehman Brothers collapsed. It’s ten years since the touchpaper was lit that sparked the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It’s exactly ten years since I landed in Vienna for Sibos 2008 on Sunday, September 14 2008, to find voicemail after voicemail asking for commentary about the crisis. Lloyds took…

One other thing struck me as the discussions fired away in Shanghai at Lang Di … is China going to haemorrhage and bring down the world’s financial systems … or is that just what the Western media would like us to think? The reason I raise it is that I see almost every day in…

I enjoyed the LendIt conference in Shanghai, and wrote a few notes. In particular, I enjoyed hearing the story of XWBank as told by Jiang Hai, the Vice Chairman. His presentation was in Chinese but, from the simultaneous translation and slides, I picked up some interesting stats. To begin with, I woke up because the…