Case Studies

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…

I wasn’t going to post this blog but the more it sits in my head, the more I felt I had to write it. Like everyone I expect, I was really shocked by the Genoa Morandi bridge collapse that killed 43 people this month. The idea of driving happily along a major road and then…

I sometimes think I’m too harsh on the financial community, with my continual banter about core systems change, lack of digital leadership, inability to see how critical digital is to their future and the impact FinTech is making on global financial structures. I sound like a broken record and rarely post praise of banks. But…

Last week, our good friend Dave Birch posted a great blog about the Amazonisation of Banking, most of which I agreed with. So I asked Dave if I could repost it here and he said “yes, of course”. Thanks Dave. Enjoy! The Amazonisation of Banking… …is very different from Amazon being a bank A while back, the…

I met a Washington insider this week. During the banter, I mentioned how much better the European authorities are at beating up the US tech giants than the Americans. This is illustrated well by the recent New York Times feature on Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition commissioner. Ms. Vestager, 50 and a native of Denmark, is…