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Why challenger banks find it hard to challenge

I was thinking about this article in The Telegraph saying what a rotten job supermarkets have made of competing with banks. Tesco sold its mortgage book to Lloyds two years ago owing to “challenging market conditions” and is now closing all personal current accounts. Marks & Spencer this year decided to close all of its bank…

Take the Finverse more seriously

I’ve blogged a bit about the Finverse – where the metaverse and crypto come together – and was reading Jemima Kelly’s column on the FT about the Metaverse and crypto. She states: As far as I’m concerned, the hypocritical fantasy that underpins crypto also lies at the heart of the metaverse. This isn’t about building…

Banks’ bones are being picked apart by specialists … what will be left?

McKinsey estimate that payment processing will generate $2.6 trillion a year in fees by 2025, which raises this stream to 40% of a banks overall revenues. Whoopy-doo! But why are they forecasting banks have these revenues? I searched the article, and maybe my search missed something, but I didn’t see FinTech mentioned once, and yet FinTech…

Developers are the new bankers

There was a good report the other day from Wells Fargo. The headlines: Banks spend $200 billion a year on technology, more than any other industry 100,000 banking jobs will disappear through automation in the next five years Most will be the low-paid roles in the bank that provide administration services 1 in 5 workers…

Is ethical banking a thing?

I just stumbled across a great article about ethical banking. We can call it socially useful banking or green banking or whatever, but it’s all about a bank’s role in society and the scheme of things. Are banks doing the right or wong things? My gut feeling is that banks have been doing the wrong…

Can regulations make data work?

I was reflecting on the fact that we work in our silo. Our silo is banking or FinTech or InsurTech or WealthTech or RegTech or whatever. What about HealthTech, FarmTech, PharmaTech, GovTech and all the other industries digitalising? What about if we linked them all together? That’s what future trends are indicating: an integration of…

What has Open Banking ever done for us?

Talking of Open Banking, I hosted a dinner focused upon Open Banking and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) in London the other night. The conversation was with neobanks and challengers and was an interesting mix of old and young views. For example, someone opened by saying that BaaS and Open Banking has hardly delivered anything. It’s disappointing and clearly…

Is there a good way to shut a customer down?

My mate Dave Birch wrote a Forbes piece the other day titled Unbank the Banked. I thought it was going to be a story about how banks are ejecting thousands of customers due to poor onboarding. Instead Dave wrote about the unbanked don’t necessarily need banks. It’s a good piece, but there is also the…

Why didn’t Google Plex its’ muscles?

A year ago, Google announced a compelling new offer: “You’re lagging in technology. Your current vendors are years behind. Consumers think you’re irrelevant. We’re hip, we’re cool, we have all the latest technologies, Now, they’ve dumped it. Why? Most reports point to internal trouble and strife. For example, Ars Technica cited a report in Business Insider that the Google Pay…

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