Digital Bank

Building on yesterday’s news, the consumer research organisation Which? just released a report with a whole bunch of stats on UK bank branch closures.  Over 1,000 branches have closed in the last two years, with HSBC being most aggressive, shutting over 27% of their network. Source: BBC A total of 1,046 branches – equivalent to…

I was pointed to this article in the weekend’s Daily Wail by the one and only Duena Blomstrom, and it makes for great reading.  It’s all about the death squeals of consumers and journalists as they see the last bank in the village leave.  Here’s the list of HSBC bank branch closures this year alone: What…

I’m relaxing and thinking.  A bad combination.  Just had several sessions with different conferences on Brexit, Open API’s, PSD2, Open Sourcing, Open Banking, Innovation and more … and it all seems like such drivel.  One of the sessions was asking the question: is it time to drop the curtain on innovation theatre?  Yes, for gawds…

I was intrigued by a comment made by Anne Boden, founder of Starling Bank, on a panel I chaired the other day.  Anne used to work for ABN Amro, AIB and RBS, and is now a Fintech start-up and her comment went along the lines of: “I’ve now realised that the simple changes I needed…

I’ve recently been wowed by series such as House of Cards (Netflix) and The Man in the High Castle (Amazon), and am really blown away by The Crown (Netflix) and The Grand Tour (Amazon).   I’m blown away not because these are good internet shows, which they are, but by the budgets being spent on them….

I talk to a lot of wealth managers and private banks. They want to lead in digital as their clients are the coolest, richest people on the planet.  It used to be that everything for a high net worth (HNW) client was face-to-face; now it’s skype-to-skype; tomorrow it’s machine-to-machine. The large wealth managers, private banks…

I blogged the other day about too many banks and that there’s not a big enough market for forty of them here in Britain.  It made me think about what do customers really want?  We talk about digital, apps, mobile and more, and yet the average customer … are they bothered?  I suspect that many…

Bye bye banking job for life Many of the banking folk I meet have been with the bank as man and boy, woman and girl.  It’s a job for life.  Funnily enough, I’ve never known one of those jobs.  I guess it’s because I work in tech, and many of the tech firms I’ve worked…

I’m a big fan of Kraken, the digital currency exchange in California, as it’s my main exchange for investing in digital assets.  If you want to know more, checkout their general overview at the end of this blog.  I’m also a fan of their blog, which regularly sends me interesting stuff and they’ve just launched…

Mid-way through #money2020 and in my fourth back-to-back chat about Fintech and leadership and core systems renewal and machine learning and and and … I am suddenly taken back to my roots.  My roots are firmly in data.  I guess that’s because I started in technology looking at office automation and workflow, process re-engineering and…