Digital Bank

The big news yesterday is that Klarna is now Europe’s largest FinTech unicorn, valued at $5.5 billion, and the sixth largest FinTech unicorn worldwide (discounting Ant Financial, Ping An and co). According to CB Insights, Stripe is the largest FinTech unicorn (USA, $22.5 billion), followed by One97 Communications (PayTM India, $10 billion); Nubank (Brazil, $10…

It’s the holiday season, so my wife dragged me off to Disneyland with the children. It was a great experience but, halfway through, I saw this t-shirt: “It was all started by a mouse” Now it wasn’t. It was started by Walt and his brother who became a formidable team. Walt, the visionary, and his…

I sat through a soul-destroying meeting the other day. The meeting was with a C-level decision maker in a bank, and we were brainstorming. Ideas were flowing and, at the end of the ideation process, we went to see the C-level person to get his view. It wasn’t good. You can’t do that because the…

As banks embrace digital transformation, there is a high level of discomfort amongst bank staff around the change. First, they hear almost every day that artificial intelligence and machine learning will automate their jobs. They fear the future. They fear losing their job. How can you reassure them that they can participate in the change…

A few years ago, I posted a guest article from Philippe Gelis, co-founder and CEO of FX firm Kantox, on Why FinTech Banks will rule the world. It was very popular and made my top ten posts of 2015, and Philippe has been kind enough to let me share another of his updates. This one…

The next day, the grandson came to visit his grandfather again, and immediately returned to the conversation of yesterday. Grandson: Granddad, you know you were talking about how money and banking used to be. Well, I think it’s a lot better today. Granddad: How so, lad? Grandson: Well, a good example is that I can…

Being raised on Monty Python, an old sketch popped into my head (The Four Yorkshire Men) and led to a thought. A grandfather and grandson are at the dinner table … Grandfather: Ah, when I was a lad, life was very different. Grandson: In what way, grandad? Grandfather: Well, we used to get our milk delivered…

No, I don’t mean Attention Deficit Disorder, which would be ADD, but I mean Artificially Intelligent with Dumb Data. Now, I know I moan on and on about fragmented legacy systems, but I honestly have no idea how a bank could ever be able to compete with an Apple or Amazon, or even a Marcus…

Building on yesterday’s blog about reports that are useful, I just found another one from UK Finance (formerly the British Bankers Association) on how they see AI in banking, released last week. The report is in two parts that address what they see as the two key issues banks face in using AI: they see…