Digital Bank

I just chaired a major retailers conference in Malmo, Sweden. Not a payments conference or retail payments conference or merchants payments conference. A retailers conference. It surprised me how much of the discussion was about loyalty, customer engagement and customer retention, as those discussions rarely come up at payments conferences. In fact, when I listed…

I was struck by one slide in a presentation the other day. The slide stated this: I need a mortgage … to buy a house Why did this strike me? Probably because you realise, from the customer view, that financial services has nothing to do with money. It is 100% to do with living a…

I was thinking about what it would be like to be a bank CEO right now. That happens quite often, and I often attend meetings where these things are discussed and the challenges that bank CEO’s face. The last great presentation I saw such insights was when we had the CEO of the British Bankers’ Association…

I’ve had a lot of thoughts recently about how much automation can go. In most banks, one or two people look over the shoulder of those doing the work to make sure they comply. If we could get rid of all those people checking the checkers, there would huge savings which made me beg the…

In case you didn’t notice, this week was the week of the #SingaporeFinTechFestival. Although I was in Asia last week, this week I’ve been invited to be in America and so could not attend. Nevertheless, my good friends at Ant Group have been there and made some major announcements A good example is this one,…

We are living in a cost of living crisis. Boil this down to the essentials: can you afford to live? Many of us cannot. Energy bills have gone through the roof; basic essentials from food to shampoo are twice the cost they were; and the idea of a holiday for many has become a dream,…

The internet isn’t working today. My phone is stuck on a screen saying trying to connect. My laptop has this continuing circle of stuckness. It is seriously annoying. When digital breaks down, it leaves you stranded. That’s OK. It’s cool. Except that, when you depend upon digital, it screws up your day, especially for those…

During 2023 a change has taken place in banking that has been little reported or, at least in my circles, little discussed. The change is Basel IV. A bit like most regulations, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) review and update their rules every five to ten years or so, and gradually introduce more…

Six years ago, I wrote about John Cryan, the then CEO of Deutsche Bank, saying that most people in the bank would lose their jobs to AI. He stated at a German conference that “people behaving like robots doing mechanical things, tomorrow we’re going to have robots behaving like people”. Thirty years ago, showing my…

If banking was delivered like a song, how would it feel? Would it have emotion and belief, or just be delivered as words and music by a robot? The difference between customer engagement and customer service is pretty much the difference between delivering a stage song and being on the stage. I am a huge…