Digital Bank

One of the surprises I have had in my discussions with banks that are doing digital well, is how all of them seem profoundly committed to cloud-computing. Some more than others, as one of the banks I spoke to wants to achieve over 80% of their IT infrastructure, software and …

I picked up an interesting article from Reuters, about how Asian technology firms are moving into banking in a different way to Europe or America. The article says that Amazon and Alphabet / Google are far more interested in serving banks with cloud and advertising, rather than competing with them, …

I’ve recently seen two blogs about issues with challenger banks N26 and Tandem. They both relate to the ways in which these new banks communicate, or not in these cases. Judith Bogner, a well-known and followed broadcaster, explains regarding N26 and the fact that her husband was locked out of …

During the weekend I presented the trends on FinTech and Tech Fin, my two favourite subjects. I’ll update on that shortly but I was also involved in a study the organisers – The European House Ambrosetti, a leading economics think tank based in Italy – conducted before the conference. The …

I find life interesting. Themes recur over and over and over again. Will big banks survive? When will we, will we be cashless? Oh when, will we, will be branchless? Can we really replace the City with a trading network of algorithms? And more. One of my favourite recurring themes …

I was in conversation with a banker the other day and we got around to regulations and regulators, as many conversations with banks tend to do. There were some interesting reflections in that dialogue, however. I guess it falls into three categories: the way regulations used to be; the way …

I find it interesting when I read perspectives on FinTech, money and banking. Going digital, getting rid of branches, becoming cashless seem to be the main themes, and yet this ignores that every part of the world is different. It’s hard to go digital if the country has little infrastructure; …

I used to blog about blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) almost once a week … four years ago. Today, I hardly blog about it at all. I guess it just shows what’s top of mind and what’s not at any time in FinTech and, right now, blockchain is not …

So, I blogged last week about women in FinTech and whether we care, and got lots of replies … from women … who said yes, we care. Interesting that there were not so many replies from the other gender, but hey what do you expect? One interesting insight is that …

One of the greatest challenges in digital transformation is the cultural change, that has to be led with passion and commitment from the top-down. As I’ve already mentioned, that means a Board mandate and the Chair and CEO being fully on board. But what about the C-team? And the level …

A year ago I blogged about invisible banking and that I have some issues with it, namely that the bank brand disappears and the customer finds it too easy to spend without thinking. Now, I read more and more about embedded banking, contextual banking, frictionless banking and more, and I …

I can understand why bankers can be sceptical about what technologists say. For years, technologists have been telling them that their business is threatened by technological change. They’ve been shouting that they will be disintermediated; they say that the bank must change and change fast to keep up; they argue …

I’ve mentioned quite often that you cannot sort out all of the banks systems and structures overnight. It has to be a slow burn and often takes more than five years. It also appears to take place in three phases. The first phase is to sort out the basics. If …

There are five camps out there. The first is the FinTech camp. This camp sit around the campfire and go “down with banks, down with banks”. They believe banks are out-dated legacy firms who have no idea about the modern age of technology. They believe banks are money-grabbing Shylocks, purely …

There’s a lot of talk about trust when you meet with people in finance. Customers trust us with their money … there is trust in banks … we are trusted when it comes to advice … our brand is a trusted brand. I usually keep quiet as most of that …