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Digital Bank

Neobanks: are they really challenging?

In surfing this week, I found a great article on my friend Amit Goel‘s website GoMedici.com. The company has just completed a deep dive into the world of challenger banks or, as they term them, neobanks. The time for neobanks is now. Here’s their summary of thinking: Neobanking 2.0: Global Deep Dive 2020 Just like…

Realising the digital dream (free research)

I recently did a podcast and webinar with the Institute for International Finance (IIF). The timing was great because they’ve just produced a set of three reports about digital transformation in partnership with Deloitte. I can thoroughly recommend the three reports so here they are: Realizing the Digital Promise: Part 1 Realizing the Digital Promise:…

BaaS works, it’s the regulations that don’t

During my MoneyBox interview about Wirecard (see end of this blog), Paul asked me the question: how could this happen again? What’s next? And I said, we learn from our mistakes. Progress never stops. Wirecard won’t shut down FinTech. It will amend it. This means this is not the end of Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), but an…

Wirecard or Weirdcard?

Another day and another headline about Wirecard: ‘The money’s gone’: Wirecard collapses owing $4 billion Wirecard’s Missing Billions Forces Out CEO, Panics Lenders Wirecard: Former boss arrested over €1.9bn scandal How Wirecard fooled most of the people all of the time Inside Wirecard EY failed to ask for Wirecard bank statements for 3 years Softbank…

Is FinTech getting it wrong? Focus on needs and wants

A friend of mine, Alessandro Hatami, wrote an interesting piece on Sifted that I shared in my news yesterday. He claims that neobanks like Monzo and Starling are not reinventing banking at all. They’re just modifying and improving it. Alessandro then goes on to cite the key things that banking should really focus upon: There…

The world’s best banks, according to Forbes

Forbes just launched a list of the world’s best banks, based upon a survey of over 40,000 consumers in partnership with Statista. I’m always wary of such surveys as, like influencer lists, they often reflect the world they want and miss a lot of what’s really happening. Nevertheless, there are some interesting comments in the dialogue…

What happens to customers who don’t want digital?

Living in a digital world, it’s hard to imagine being disconnected. Yet, some people are. According to a recent survey by Which? Magazine, four percent of consumers don’t have a mobile phone. Personally, I cannot imagine living without a mobile phone, but some people are happy to be off the network. However, there’s an issue…

Dealing with a crisis: FinTech versus Bank

The chasm between start-ups and incumbents is massively exposed by coronavirus. I realised this early on, when I saw that FinTech firms who were born on the internet were far more ready for working from home than traditional banks who depend on branches, buildings, office and physicality. A good example is how traditional banks who…

Where was the digital backup to our physical structure?

The coronavirus crisis has hit everyone sudden and hard. We originally thought it was a Chinese crisis and now it’s a global one. It’s shut down economies worldwide and the banking system has been asked to step in fast and address the crisis. Governments worldwide have asked banks to give out loans to large and…

Build, Buy or Transform the Bank?

I was recently watching an online poll that asked the best way for a traditional bank to compete with the new digital banks. Should they build a new bank, buy a digital bank competitor, or transform the old bank? The vote was split fairly equally between all three choices after over 1,000 votes. #FinTech poll….

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