Digital Bank

I was in a conversation with a bank executive talking about innovation.   We all know the Catch-22 in a bank: you want to be innovative, but only as long as there’s no risk but, with any innovation, there has to be risk.  You can play in the sandbox like little kids but, if you try…

I was talking with a few FinTech firms the other day. They are all fully licensed banks, and are less than 15 years old. They all seem to have one thing in common: refreshment. What I mean by this is that they talk about technology in a very different way to traditional banks.  Traditional banks,…

I enjoyed this article in the Evening Standard by Melanie McDonagh and thought I would share it here, to see what reaction it gets. The loss of our high-street banks will make us all poorer — but not financially If you have tears, reader, prepare to shed them now. My bank in Berkeley Square is closing. From November,…

Just found an interesting document from Harvard Business Review with the title: How financial services views the digital agenda. It is the result of research conducted by the Harvard Business Review with the Genpact Research Institute, looking at the impact of digitalisation in finance, and confirms something I have been saying for years. A majority…

I was talking to a group of Treasury folks and the guy before me gave a pitch about the CFO of the future.  The pitch focused upon how the CFO would be managing risk, incorporating different technologies, managing M&A, dealing with globalisation and so on and so forth.  I couldn’t help but sit there and…

I was struck by some commentary with John Cryan, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, over on Bloomberg. The article is talking about the wild ride he has had since taking over the helm of the bank which had formerly been run by two CEOs (Juergen Fitschen and Anshu Jain). He knew when he took over…

I recently appeared on an interview with Salesforce’s LeadingEdge webcast. Afterwards, they picked out 12 statements I made that they thought particularly noteworthy, so thought I would repost them here: 12 Noteworthy Quotes on the Future of Banking The digital revolution is fundamentally impacting every industry across the board, and banking is no exception — in…

There’s an old joke about the guy who’s lost driving in the countryside who stops to ask a pedestrian how to get to the city.  The pedestrian replies: “oh, if you want to get there, I wouldn’t start from here”, and this is exactly how banks feel today.  They want to get to the nirvana…

One of the presentations I particularly enjoyed at the EFMA meeting was from Gürhan Çam, Senior Vice President- Digital Banking at DenizBank, Turkey.  You will all know by now that I love the innovations in retail banking in Turkey, and Gürhan didn’t disappoint. First, there is the fastPay Wallet.  With fastPay you can do send…

I just attended an EFMA conference where the opening presentation talked about the most innovative banks in the world. They may or may not be, you can decide, as I’m posting some of their stories here.  These are the ones I quite liked, so it’s not exhaustive. See what you think … Capital One Skill for…