Digital Bank

Someone turned to me the other day, mid-discussion around Facebook and their abuse of customer data, and asked: How did we get here? My answer: Because we let it happen. In the last twenty years, America has allowed big tech firms in Silicon Valley to become monolith giant monopolies of search, media and commerce. And…

A further discussion about data and the key issue of who should have access. During a recent lunch, we talked about how Chinese citizens allow the government to see all of their digital footprint via Tencent and Alibaba, but they do this for a number of reasons. The advantage of an easy lifestyle superapps and…

Building on my blog post last week, showing the views of 1997, it was clear years ago that banking was under siege. However, that siege never happened. Tesco thought that most banks were “a bunch of clowns”, but never cracked the market and still have not. Sainsbury may have onboarded customers, but they never built…

Interesting conversation about switching accounts. I’ve had a few people saying that banks don’t have loyal customers, but they have trapped customers. By way of example, an email from a friend: I am just exactly as loyal to my bank as they are to me, which is to say not even slightly. I swear to…

I picked up a few innovative changes taking place this week within banks. In fact, I should point out that banks are not static beasts, as many claim. They are changing all the time, doing things all the time, adapting all the time. The question is: are they adapting in the right way? Charles Darwin…

Really interesting interview here with Ana Botin, Executive Chair of Santander, on Bloomberg. It starts with talking about how Santander can make a difference on climate change with Ana claiming that the bank is voted the most sustainable bank in the world. But when the interviewer, Erik Schatzker, asks her how Santander is making a…

In the last month, there’s been a wave of announcements from Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon about banking. We’ve seen Facebook’s major activities in trying to create a digital currency called Libra, and Apple’s move into finance with a credit card from Goldman Sachs which, in just a month, offered a $10 billion line of…

I always like to hear what bankers think about the future of banking – it’s probably more accurate than what janitors or futurists think – and so was pleased to see two items in my in-tray this week, one from HSBC and the other from Wells Fargo. According to the summary of HSBC’s report: In…

I’ve said for a while that the Big Tech giants will not become banks. Amazon and Alibaba will do a lot of bank-like activities, but they will never move into full-service banking, as in offering deposit accounts. Why won’t they? Because that’s full banking activity which has all of the audit and compliance overhead that…

I attended the New Statesman’s FinTech Summit yesterday. I gave the opening speech and was followed by the indomitable Anne Boden, CEO and Founder of Starling Bank, who talked about the path to profitability. She asserts the bank will deliver profitability next year, but her presentation focused upon a number of what she sees as…