Case Studies

I wrote about the fact that digital transformation does not create greater shareholder value … yet … and then DBS announce that they are the first bank in the world to demonstrate the link between digitization and shareholder value creation on November 17. Interesting, as I blogged about this on November …

There are two big tech topics in banking these days, namely Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain. These two tech titans are changing the back office of banks into intelligent shared structures that will be mind-blowing a decade from now. In fact, they’re not far off that today. I’ve written a …

We hosted ePassi at our recent launch of Nordic Finance Innovate (NFI) in Helsinki, Finland. ePassi are the partner firm of Alipay, bringing the app to Finland to allow Chinese tourists to pay easily when travelling via Finland to Europe. It’s been very successful as it was initially launched to …

I finally finished writing my new book. I’m not going to say too much about it, as it now has to go through a lengthy editing cycle and will be released next year. A key theme in the new book is financial inclusion and, to those ends, I made a visit …

I mentioned the Lego Bank not built by Lego recently. It’s all about the Open Marketplace of apps, APIs and analytics, and I said that the idea was illustrated well by firms like Solaris, Clear.bank and Bud. Just to follow on from that, here is a series of video interviews we …

I’m making a presentation on cybersecurity this week at our Nordic Finance Innovation meetings. This meant preparing a few new slides from scratch as I don’t have a set deck for cybercrime, and sat and started ideas just as the news dropped about the Equifax breach. You’ll all know about …

I now think I am a good friend of Pablo García Arabéhéty, CGAP’s Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean. This is, in part, because he’s contributed one of the key pieces I’m using in my new book Digital Human (due for release next Spring), and partly because we met at …

I’ve been spending a lot of time travelling around the LatAm markets over the past few years. In fact, I was just at the CIAB FELBAN FIBA conference in Miami that covers this geography and this year saw many firms from Nicaragua to Honduras to Costa Rica attend. But the major …

I just had a whirlwind visit to Indonesia to support DBS in the rollout of their digibank service there. It was a very short visit, but a packed evening of presentations and discussions. Part of the time was spent with Piyush Gupta, the CEO, who I’ve been watching for some …

I get press releases all the time and generally ignore them. In fact, I don’t know why they email me, as I never post them on the blog. Uh-oh. I just got one that I’m posting on the blog. Floodgates opening.   What will happen when Amazon opens a bank. …

I was surprised to make a chance discovery about The Wizard of Oz.  The film with Judy Garland is firmly embedded in modern culture as a classic, but did you know that it was a rally call against the financial system when the book was originally written? It as a …

I was struck by some commentary with John Cryan, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, over on Bloomberg. The article is talking about the wild ride he has had since taking over the helm of the bank which had formerly been run by two CEOs (Juergen Fitschen and Anshu Jain). He …

I really enjoyed a recent article on CGAP (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor). If you don’t know them, CGAP is a global partnership of over 30 leading organizations that seek to advance financial inclusion. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP’s mission is to improve the lives of poor …

One of the presentations I particularly enjoyed at the EFMA meeting was from Gürhan Çam, Senior Vice President- Digital Banking at DenizBank, Turkey.  You will all know by now that I love the innovations in retail banking in Turkey, and Gürhan didn’t disappoint. First, there is the fastPay Wallet.  With …

I just attended an EFMA conference where the opening presentation talked about the most innovative banks in the world. They may or may not be, you can decide, as I’m posting some of their stories here.  These are the ones I quite liked, so it’s not exhaustive. See what you think …