The world changes every day, and some of us feel it changes faster every day. This is evidenced by the rapid cycle change in Fintech where last year’s hardly mentioned thing has become this year’s hot thing. Blockchain is the case in point. However, as pointed out at Fintech Connect this week, most of this…
I’m often asked how much is being invested in Fintech and where is it going? Based upon a lot of assumptions and studies, the figures this year look like they’re heading near $30 billion invested in Fintech, with most in Silicon Valley. A third is in payments, of which 10% is in blockchain and bitcoin…
I saw a fascinating presentation by Porter Erisman, author of Alibaba’s World, last week. Porter was involved in the early days of Alibaba, having lived in China since 1994. As an American in China it must have been a fascinating experience, and Porter talked about how Alibaba was formed and how it differs to Amazon…
There’s been a lot of debate about millennials and their likes and dislikes. I myself cite regular surveys that millennials would rather go to the dentist than visit their bank, and that surveys of millennials find no bank brands are desired. In some ways this gives a false impression, as we have to think that…
So I was listening to a couple of banking folks discussing the search for new talent. I didn’t know until I heard the discussion, how tough it is these days. I mean I knew that MBA students had moved away from banking in their droves to seek careers with consultancies, but generally thought banks were doing…
In that same dialogue about when banks should act to block, buy or beat new competition, I realised that the new competition is doing something quite clever. Unsurprisingly, Fintech firms look at banking and realise that it’s pretty dull and onerous stuff. AML, KYC, compliance, audit, regulatory reporting, rules and oversight of business are the…
I had an interesting discussion about change in the banking markets again the other day. We were citing emerging new players like Square, Stripe, Klarna and Lending Club, as well as players that have already emerged like PayPal and Apple Pay. In all of these cases, my colleague felt that these players have all added…
I had a really interesting evening this week, moderating an industry roundtable with panel participants including: Cliff Moyce, Strategic Adviser, DataArt Chris Barker, Managing Director, Global Head of Digital & Engineering Services, RBS, Mike Powell, Managing Director for enterprise capabilities, Financial & Risk, Thomson Reuters Scott Eblen, Chief Product Officer, Nutmeg Frank Neumann (COO, Quantstore)…
I had a really interesting conversation with Chris Barker, Head of Digital and Engineering for Royal Bank of Scotland. As usual, the conversation moved around data analytics, deep learning, artificial intelligence, building enterprise data systems, separating content from processing, re-platforming the back-end infrastructure and core systems and more. I’ll write more about that stuff tomorrow,…
I’ve been asked the same question twice this week in two separate conferences (one in Vienna, the other in San Francisco): “how will we deal with the corruptive forces when we are all on the net?” The second questioner clarified what she meant by referencing the film Enemy of the State, where Will Smith gets…
