I had a really interesting conversation with Chris Barker, Head of Digital and Engineering for Royal Bank of Scotland. As usual, the conversation moved around data analytics, deep learning, artificial intelligence, building enterprise data systems, separating content from processing, re-platforming the back-end infrastructure and core systems and more. I’ll write more about that stuff tomorrow,…
In the 1970s, Walter Wriston, the then CEO and Chairman of Citibank, said that “information about money is becoming more important than money itself”. His successor, John Reed, said that “banking is just bits and bytes” in the 1980s. How right they were, and this just underscores how important digitalisation is to banking. We have…
I was honoured to be invited yesterday to address the European Banking Federation’s (EBF) annual conference in Brussels. There were many dignitaries there, as well as a number of senior Eurocrats, and so felt that my message of Fintech, Blockchain and Real-Time for Free might fall on resistant ears, but quite the opposite. I was…
I have seen several banks note, and particularly two in the past week, that shows the shift of thinking as we move to the hybrid world of technology and finance. Most talk about Fintech start-ups but these two show a different perspective. First, Derek White of Barclays talks a lot with Business Insider about blockchain and…
This blog was first published on SAP for Banking, 26th August 2015 and is Part Two or a two-part series. Part One was published on 12th August. Will Alipay and Wechat get Amazon and Google into banking? No-one can ignore the developments taking place in China’s banking system, as their two largest internet players launched banks…
I recently had a great conversation with the head of innovation at a bank. In the middle of the conversation, we got into a discussion about how to get rid of complacency in the management team. The fact is that this bank is doing well. It’s growing its customer footprint, cross-sell ratio, account holdings, deposits…
I was recently interviewed by Emerging Markets Review just before travelling to Korea in July. The interview lasted a while, but stunned me when they produced the magazine with yours truly front page and centre. Rather than saying anything more, here's the interview which you can download as a PDF if you prefer. The global…
In part one I talked about bank systems, structures and people holding back innovation due to their legacy, and asked whether legacy structures could be migrated fast enough to keep up with the new guys? The answer to that question is yes, because banks also have legacy customers. That is why half the banks costs…
It’s interesting reflecting on my blog earlier this week from Blythe Masters speech on blockchain. She mentioned the friction between the old system that works and the new system that’s being built, and how the two have to work together. You have to migrate the old with minimum risk to the new, and the new…
