Digital Bank

Jul 1, 2015

Watch out Fintech, the Banks are Coming!

I was upset to be unable to join the recent debate in New York on digital banking. The debate was framed around the theme: "This House Believes Fintech Will Eat The Bankers Lunch", and I was going to oppose the motion. It ended up that I was conflicted and had to defer to a far…

Jun 25, 2015

The case for cloud: cut IT costs by 40% or else!

I met a large bank’s CIO the other day who was told to reduce his IT budget for 2016 by 40%. He was a bit upset, and asked me if I had any ideas? I had a few but it’s a tough ask, especially when most banks IT budgets are exploding. According to Celent banks…

Jun 23, 2015

Banks as Value Systems Integrators

I regularly use the line that banks will become Value Systems Integrators, but haven’t blogged about this much, so here’s the explanation. Banks have historically controlled the value chain of finance from deposits to credit. Because of this, banks have become control freaks, believing they have to build and manage everything. It’s the reason why…

Jun 22, 2015

Question: change the bank or launch a new bank?

So I was talking about the big challenges of creating a Digital Bank, and am reminded of the approaches that banks take to do this. The first is the hardest, and it’s the one I described last week: transformation. A transformational bank process – where the whole bank’s business model is turned on its head…

Jun 19, 2015

Three key steps to becoming a Digital Bank

I had a fascinating conversation with a bank about digital strategies, and am now well versed in my approach. A bank has to redesign itself from the ground up to be digital. It’s not a channel or an add-on, but fabric and foundation of the new way to bank. Old systems that process in batch…

Jun 18, 2015

Digital banks think differently

Six years ago, when #innotribe first started at #sibos, we were given the chance to pitch an idea. My team’s idea was to integrate the trust you have built in the social network into the financial credit scoring system, and give you a trust score that could be leveraged by the bank. We didn’t win…

Jun 17, 2015

If I call you and you pick up next week, am I happy? So why do I accept this for a payment?

I often sit and think about the claim from my bitcoin friends that they’ve invented money without government. I’ve blogged about it quite often too. The reason it is of so much interest is that if the blockchain and bitcoin can circumvent the financial system and the banks, then we really are in transformational times. …

Jun 16, 2015

The Digital Bank Debate Continues

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had a great twitter debate between Brett King and Michal Panowicz, with others joining like Jim Marous and myself. The debate is now being staged live at Next Bank New York tomorrow. It’s not so much a rumble in the jungle but a wrinkle-in in Brooklyn. Anyways,…

Jun 8, 2015

Banks question Fintech disruption … and ask the wrong question

I recently attended a conference in America, where the audience of mainly bankers could post questions to the speaker. During the digital bank discussion, here are the questions that came in and, purely because they are fairly common in everyday dialogue, I thought I would post and answer the questions here. Most are related to…

Jun 3, 2015

Building the new financial marketplace

I introduced the business model debate about banks yesterday, as the discussion always comes back to the new competition. Who are the new competition? Are they the upstart fintech startups or are they Google, Amazon and brethren? The answer is it’s both, but I wouldn’t worry about Google, Amazon and co as much, as they…