Digital Bank

I find life interesting. Themes recur over and over and over again. Will big banks survive? When will we, will we be cashless? Oh when, will we, will be branchless? Can we really replace the City with a trading network of algorithms? And more. One of my favourite recurring themes is when will we have…

I was in conversation with a banker the other day and we got around to regulations and regulators, as many conversations with banks tend to do. There were some interesting reflections in that dialogue, however. I guess it falls into three categories: the way regulations used to be; the way they are; the way they…

I find it interesting when I read perspectives on FinTech, money and banking. Going digital, getting rid of branches, becoming cashless seem to be the main themes, and yet this ignores that every part of the world is different. It’s hard to go digital if the country has little infrastructure; it doesn’t make sense to…

I used to blog about blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) almost once a week … four years ago. Today, I hardly blog about it at all. I guess it just shows what’s top of mind and what’s not at any time in FinTech and, right now, blockchain is not top of mind. In fact,…

So, I blogged last week about women in FinTech and whether we care, and got lots of replies … from women … who said yes, we care. Interesting that there were not so many replies from the other gender, but hey what do you expect? One interesting insight is that the future of work will…

One of the greatest challenges in digital transformation is the cultural change, that has to be led with passion and commitment from the top-down. As I’ve already mentioned, that means a Board mandate and the Chair and CEO being fully on board. But what about the C-team? And the level that reports to the C-team?…

A year ago I blogged about invisible banking and that I have some issues with it, namely that the bank brand disappears and the customer finds it too easy to spend without thinking. Now, I read more and more about embedded banking, contextual banking, frictionless banking and more, and I think people have got this…

I can understand why bankers can be sceptical about what technologists say. For years, technologists have been telling them that their business is threatened by technological change. They’ve been shouting that they will be disintermediated; they say that the bank must change and change fast to keep up; they argue that the bank is not…

I’ve mentioned quite often that you cannot sort out all of the banks systems and structures overnight. It has to be a slow burn and often takes more than five years. It also appears to take place in three phases. The first phase is to sort out the basics. If there are known issues in…

There are five camps out there. The first is the FinTech camp. This camp sit around the campfire and go “down with banks, down with banks”. They believe banks are out-dated legacy firms who have no idea about the modern age of technology. They believe banks are money-grabbing Shylocks, purely trying to steal the cash…