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. …
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…
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…
I regularly talk about the business model of banking and how it’s changing. The business model is based upon three things: Manufacturing, which runs the product and services innovation and administration centres in the back office; Processing, which focuses upon operational excellence in processing orders from front office through back office; and Retailing, where the…
The real way to crack the onboarding and criminal activity is to create strong and secure digital identities. We are moving in that direction, but it’s a long slow process. For ages now, I’ve written about getting rid of passwords and improving authentication using mobile technologies: Why is KYC so difficult? AML prevention lies in…
I was talking about the internet of things again today, and realised that I have a grand vision of the not too distant future where everything communicates with everything. We have chips as tiny as nanodots inside every brick, pavement slab, tyre, wall, ceiling … you name it. We have more intelligent chips inside car…
In this world of choice that emerges from the integration of new technology models and old financial models, we see hybrid systems emerging that bring together the best-of-the-best. A great example was announced today, as Metro Bank and Zopa join forces. The deal allows deposits from Metro Bank retail customers to use P2P lending as…
One of my good connections via social media is Huy Nguyen Trieu. Huy writes a regular blog at Disruptive Finance, as well as being a Managing Director for Macro Structuring at Citi. He posted something in the last week that I felt was worth re-posting here as a guest blog. Read and weep. If you can’t…
