Crisis

There are lots of ways in which FinTech is changing the world, and the one we love to discuss the most is financial inclusion. The figures stun me. Over a billion people have been banked in the last decade, according to the World Bank. 69 percent of adults – 3.8 billion people – now have…

I got hauled up the other day by someone who thought I was very insensitive in blogging about this crisis as an economic one, but not a catastrophic one. What I actually wrote was (I’ve amended it slightly since): Someone wrote the other day that this pandemic is like a world war. It’s not. A world…

I was having a bit of ding-dong over my article about the coronavirus pandemic being perfectly predictable and not a black swan. There are many who believe the reaction to the pandemic is a black swan, as in the lockdown of Planet Earth. Hmmm … what reaction did we think we would have to a…

I’m a simple guy. I don’t trade or invest much. That may seem surprising for a FinTech guy, but most of what I’ve invested in seems to lose value. As a result, I collect rare comics instead as Batman, Spiderman and Ironman are forever. That being said, I do follow some of the leading figures…

Sitting at home, as usual, and thinking about life, I realised that my blogs were becoming far more personal and revealing than usual. I don’t post a lot of them, as I think they are too personal and revealing, but it made me realise that this crisis and lockdown has made me far more introspective…

Like many, I’ve watched 2020 unfold with a mixture of shock and horror. It began with Australian bushfires followed rapidly by the coronavirus pandemic and now the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. My real shock was that there could be so many global demonstrations during a major global lockdown. Do rules matter? Not really. But then…

I saw an interesting article the other day: I Don’t Feel Like Buying Stuff Anymore … our economy is built on Americans of all class levels buying things. What happens when the ability — and desire — to do so goes away? It’s theme is that when stuck at home with nothing to go out…

As the coronavirus gripped Europe and America in March and April, it was clear that banks had a number of issues to deal with. Suddenly shuttering branch doors, closing head office and asking staff to stay at home, became the modus operandi for all. This is something that no major financial institution had planned for,…

I’ve often questioned the valuations of unicorns in technology, whether it be Uber or Revolut. And here we are in lockdown world and the valuations of most unicorns are crashing overnight. Monzo’s value is down 40 percent, and FinTech funding is at a three year low. Some companies like Revolut were quite lucky. Raising $500…

There are lots of headlines and articles talking about the end of the office. You think about it, and it kind of makes sense. In a digital age, why do we have to go to a physical office? Why do we all cram ourselves into buses, cars and trains every morning and evening and commute?…