Digital Bank

I participated in a call the other day about financial inclusion and the moderator said that giving people banking was like giving a child the keys to your Ferrari. Without education, they would crash it so, rather than financial inclusion, you need inclusive finance. It was an interesting perspective, and made me think about the…

I was thinking about run the bank, change the bank, and the challenges therein. Part of it was down to a conversation that repeats quite often about it being easier to launch a new bank than change the old bank. Something I’ve argued against regularly. Reason being: what are you doing with the old bank, its…

I woke up and, as usual, checked the banking app for any updates or changes. There was a payment received.  Quite a major payment. It came from BIG NUTS ASS*. BIG NUTS ASS*? Who is BIG NUTS ASS*? I have no idea. I rang the bank. That took a long time. Due to coronavirus, we…

UPFRONT STATEMENT: I have crypto, but treat it as an experiment I attended an event in 2016 where Elon Musk was the star speaker. It was a good event, and he made sense. He doesn’t make sense anymore. Back then, I wondered if he was the 21st century’s real-life Tony Stark creating life on Mars…

I’m starting to worry about FinTech as they seem to have fallen foul of regulatory compliance and, as a consequence, customer trust. The biggest challenge for a challenger is to keep customer trust AND regulatory compliance. This is what we are seeing having consequences today. The fact I’m starting to worry about FinTech, as an…

Building on yesterday’s blog where I mentioned Monzo’s issues of client onboarding, I mentioned that, for the past few months, I’ve noticed many tweets from Monzo customers about accounts being closed suddenly, with no explanation. Each time, I’ve shared the information and copied Monzo and asked them to explain. Hey Chris 👋 Thanks for expressing…

Investment banking, Corporate banking, Commercial banking, Private banking and Retail banking are all very different. Too often, commentators just talk about ‘banking’. It’s not all the same. In fact, an awful lot of retail banking is propped up by investment and commercial banking. That’s where the money is made. Banks don’t make money out of…

I don’t know how your life has changed in the last year, but I realised how much mine had when I woke up this morning and thought must go and buy dog food. A year ago, I didn’t have a dog and my first thought would have been I must get to the airport to…

It’s a bank holiday weekend, and I would normally switch off. But no. Like so many of us, I’m still watching the news, keeping up-to-speed on twitter and facebook, scanning my emails and getting links. One link led me to a documentary on YouTube. It hooked me because someone mentioned that a 70-year old Grandma…

I found this article from The Asia Times interesting. It discusses the idea that China is trying to displace the US dollar as a reserve currency. Difficult. The US dollar represents over 60 percent of all currency reserves around the world. For more, check Wikipedia The euro is 20 percent and yuan/renminbi doesn’t even register. But…