Digital Bank

I said you’re probably sick of Davos but one last update. On Friday a major announcement affecting all of banking and finance globally seeped out under the radar. I spotted it. Did you? Here it is … World Economic Forum Announces Global Consortium for Digital Currency Governance Today, the World …

I’ve just been reading Jim Marous’s Digital Banking Report which ties in nicely with my new book Doing Digital, as the themes are similar. In Jim’s 70+ page report, Jim concludes that: “While there is an almost universal awareness of what needs to be done to digitally transform financial institutions, the …

Another useful person in my online network is Steve McLaughlin of @FTPartners, who I spotted sent a tweet last week saying they had produced a challenger bank report. FT Partners’ in-depth report, “The Rise of Challenger Banks” now features an exclusive interview with Brandon Krieg, Co-Founder and CEO of @Stash …

Varun Mittal, Associate Partner with EY, recently posted a couple of interesting slides about the launch of virtual banking licences to encourage challenger banks in Asia. If you’re not aware, there’s a great deal of digital banking activity across Asia. It’s not just in China, but there are notable things …

When The Financial Times does what they’re good at – covering financial markets and not technology – then they do produce some fascinating content. Case in point is the latest coverage of JPMorgan Chase’s (JPMC) 2019 results. The bank’s latest results are stunning, with the fourth-quarter profit soaring to $8.52 …

I write about a lot of things. Around three-quarters is focused on finance and technology, but the rest meanders around life, taxes, government, the economy, global trade, regulatory matters and more. All of these latter areas can probably be summed up right now as: INTERNET ANGER No, I’m not angry …

The UK implemented Open Banking in January 2018 and now, almost two years later, you would think it’s doing really well. This is why the momentum is building. The Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) shared figures that show there are 49 million data sharing requests monthly, doubling in just seven …

As it’s Friday the Thirteenth I thought I’d cheer you up with yet another core systems renewal story. There’s a great article that resonated with me in the Financial Times the other day, talking about ‘technical debt‘. The line that has stayed with me is this one: “Stripe estimates that …

An interesting lunch discussion about data the other day. It started when someone had picked up on my blog about Ana Botin, where she made the comment: “Why should data be regulated in a different way if you’re called a bank and if you’re called something else … more than two …

Someone turned to me the other day, mid-discussion around Facebook and their abuse of customer data, and asked: How did we get here? My answer: Because we let it happen. In the last twenty years, America has allowed big tech firms in Silicon Valley to become monolith giant monopolies of …

A further discussion about data and the key issue of who should have access. During a recent lunch, we talked about how Chinese citizens allow the government to see all of their digital footprint via Tencent and Alibaba, but they do this for a number of reasons. The advantage of …

Building on my blog post last week, showing the views of 1997, it was clear years ago that banking was under siege. However, that siege never happened. Tesco thought that most banks were “a bunch of clowns”, but never cracked the market and still have not. Sainsbury may have onboarded …

Interesting conversation about switching accounts. I’ve had a few people saying that banks don’t have loyal customers, but they have trapped customers. By way of example, an email from a friend: I am just exactly as loyal to my bank as they are to me, which is to say not …

I picked up a few innovative changes taking place this week within banks. In fact, I should point out that banks are not static beasts, as many claim. They are changing all the time, doing things all the time, adapting all the time. The question is: are they adapting in …

Really interesting interview here with Ana Botin, Executive Chair of Santander, on Bloomberg. It starts with talking about how Santander can make a difference on climate change with Ana claiming that the bank is voted the most sustainable bank in the world. But when the interviewer, Erik Schatzker, asks her …