The funny thing about AI in banking is that the headlines are completely wrong. Every week there’s another breathless prediction claiming that AI will “replace banks”, “eliminate core systems” or “create autonomous financial institutions”. Reading these articles, you would think that we are just months away from robo-banks running the global economy whilst human bankers…
What is a Sputnik moment? A Sputnik moment is the moment the world suddenly wakes up and realises someone else may have leapt ahead technologically. The phrase comes from 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, into space. Technically, it was just a metal sphere orbiting the Earth. Politically and psychologically,…
I spent the morning thinking about the bank of the future. It’s something I do every day. You could be simple and say that it’s embedded, invisible, everywhere, all the time. And that is true. But that is today’s bank, not tomorrows. I then have this debate about currencies. What currency do we believe in?…
I gave a keynote this week about my new book called The Intelligent Bank, which is offically launching next week in China! Walking off stage afterwards I realised something quite important: we are no longer debating the future of banking. We are living through it. The problem is that many banks still think the conversation…
In a new report by Boston Consulting Group, they conclude that the CIO is now the most important role in a bank. Not long ago, the CIO was the person who kept the lights on and kept core systems stable, costs controlled, projects delivered (eventually). That world is gone. According to BCG, the CIO now…
Over the past decade, the industry has aggressively optimised for cost and digital efficiency and, in doing so, it has quietly dismantled the human infrastructure that made banking work for millions of people. Start with the facts. In the UK alone, more than 6,000 bank branches have closed since 2015, according to consumer groups and…
I’ve just been reading McKinsey’s latest piece about the AI-powered bank. It reads like a polite consulting report, but underneath it is a fairly brutal critique of the entire banking industry because what they’re really saying – without saying it – is that most banks are structurally incapable of benefiting from AI. It not because…
I was recently working with WNS, part of Capgemini, on a few blogs. The posts are interesting so I’m sharing them here. Click on the headline links to read the full articles: Can AI Turn Regulatory Overload into Competitive Advantage in Banking? Regulation in banking is exploding, and most banks are handling it badly –…
I was recently interviewed by the International Finance Magazine about Revolut getting their UK banking licence and what this means to banks in general. Here’s the discussion: With Revolut securing a UK banking licence after years of scrutiny, do you see this as part of a broader shift where fintech platforms are evolving into fully regulated banks?…
