Digital Bank

Like quite a few big banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been messing about with doing digital by launching a number of new initiatives. The two of most note are Bó, a new retail bank, and Mettle, a service for small to medium enterprises (SMEs).* What fascinates me …

Now that’s a contentious title for a blog, but purposefully so. Old banks can compete in the new world if they’re smart … it’s just that so many of them are dumb. Dumb with data, as I’ve blogged before. To illustrate this, I have three examples. The first is that …

I had a few people haul me up over my critique of Nicholas Megaw’s article in the FT last week, including Nicholas himself. I realised post the post that the issue is definitions. In general, the term challenger banks has become accepted to be used in FinTech circles as banks …

I walked into a grocer’s store the other day. The store was resplendent with fruits of all colours and continents. There were red, yellow and green peppers; carrots, courgettes and cauliflowers; oranges, apples and bananas of both large and small; watermelons, honey melons and mangoes; green grapes, red grapes and …

I don’t get The Financial Times editorials these days. Last month, they published a ridiculous article about challenger banks eating the banker’s lunch – which I covered here as being the crumbs off the table of the banker’s lunch – and this month, they publish a totally contrary view that the …

Building on my recent updates on sustainable finance and such like, it is interesting the word purpose consistently appears throughout the sub-text. Banks need a sense of purpose to attract talent; banks need to shift from shareholder focus to purpose focus; banks must no longer be socially useless but socially useful, …

I was recently asked by Volante Technologies to consider what being a digital bank means, specifically for a commercial bank and, even more specifically, the bank’s payments and treasury services. After all most of the focus on digital banking and digital payments has been in the retail sector, where consumers …

For all the talk about how well FinTech start-ups are doing, I hear two regular laments from bank CEOs. First, why aren’t we valued like FinTechs? and second, why aren’t FinTechs regulated like us. On the first point, it’s quite clear that FinTech start-ups are being valued on potential and …

I hear this a lot, and don’t like it. Many banks say it these days, and they say it to be cool. To be like a start-up. To be like a Silicon Valley angel investment firm. To be like a young, FinTech unicorn. However, there is a massive difference between …

One of the key attributes of many of the firms I’ve talked to about doing digital transformation is that there are lay-offs but, whenever possible, these banks support people to change careers. Sure, there may be significant lay-offs if it is a heavily branch oriented bank as getting rid of …

I was talking with a senior banker, who told me that he was in charge of the Artificial Intelligence program in the bank. I was impressed as he is part of the executive leadership team of the bank and not the CIO. We have invested widely across the board in …

I just spoke at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum, a Davos for the Russian world and beyond. Hosted by Vladimir Putin there were stellar guests attending including Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, as well as other world leaders and Chris Skinner. Hanging out …

I was talking with a CXO of a bank. They are actively engaged in ‘going digital’, but she was sharing with me that the bank’s executive team had no idea what going digital means. Being brutally honest, she told me she had no idea what it means either. I was …

I often talk about the business model of a bank (or any business) being made up of three major parts: A back office that manufactures the product and administers the service; A middle office where the infrastructure is built to connect the back and front office; and A front office …

I saw a write-up in The Financial Times the other day on how Silicon Valley is eating the banker’s lunch. The article was written by Tom Braithwaite. Tom Braithwaite is the companies editor, managing the FT’s business coverage. Based in London, he was previously a Lex columnist in San Francisco. …