Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

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The things that AI will never tell you

As a seasoned traveller, I know an awful lot about flying through Heathrow Airport, and it is always frustrating me about how the airport is structured. By way of example if you land at Heathrow terminal 4 and 5, the newer terminals, they have on-site hotels, the Hilton and Sofitel respectively. However, if you land…

I just debanked my bank … before they debanked me

There’s a huge furore in Britain about debanking: the process where a bank says we cannot trust you anymore so get lost. It happened to Nigel Farage, a high profile figure, and now it’s happened to me. What happened? My bank basically decided that my regular withdrawals from a crypto exchange looked like money laundering…

Am I financial marmite?

At a conference the other day, a banker came up to me and said “oh, you’re that fintech guy who throws rocks at us all the time”. A short while later, a fintech founder came up to me and said “oh, you’re the banking guy who thinks we will all fail”. Interestingly, a short time…

Intelligent Money: When Money Thinks For You

My new book arrives soon. Titled Intelligent Money and sub-titled When Money Thinks For You, it should be a monster. You can order it from today here on Amazon and all other good book stores. What’s the book about? It’s all about Generative Finance where AI integrates with money. In preparation for this new book,…

WTF … who the finanser are you?

The bank that wants to verify my identity but cannot accept the information … OMG, what’s going on? Under new UK government rules, there’s been a crackdown on money laundering and customer identity in the banking system. The response of the banks has been archaic to say the least. By way of example I blogged…

Technology is good, but humans are more important

Sitting at a recent conference meeting, one of the folks around the table said: “technology is good, but humans are more important”. That got me thinking, and maybe not in a good way as it immediately made me see that future of machines running the world, and humans coming second. Ex Machina, Terminator, Black Mirror…

Stop talking about  “Open Banking”

Talking of sharing data, Salt Edge just sent me some interesting stats about Open Banking and Open Finance (there is a difference). They start by quoting that inconsistently reliable source Statista, who claim that the number of open banking users worldwide was expected to grow by an average of 50% per year between 2020 and…

Selling customer data – good or bad idea?

Be careful with data Many years ago a few banks debated the idea of selling customer data to get a payback. It was the wrong decision – if you sell customer data, it should the customer who gets the payback, not the bank – and they failed. The two specific examples I remember are Barclays…