Fintech

Always a controversial figure, Anne Boden has hit the headlines again after stepping down as CEO of Starling Bank. Her announcement of remaining on the Board but no longer being the leader of the bank was originally made in May: Boden, who owns 4.9 per cent of the bank she founded in 2014, said she…

Nice update this week regarding the Top 10 of everything FinTech from FinTech magazine. First, they listed the Top 10 UK FinTechs by value: Clearbank is a Centaur, valued at $590 million Atom is also a Centaur, with a valuation of $596 million PPRO moves us into the Unicorn world, with a value of $1…

I asked ChatGPT to write an article in my style. Here’s what it came up with: Introduction In the fast-paced world of finance, few have embraced the power of technology and innovation as passionately as the fintech industry. Over the past decade, fintech has revolutionized the way we think about banking, disrupting traditional financial institutions…

2023 is proving to be a punishing year for banks, finance, technology and fintech. Firms have seen massive downgrades of their market cap, and we have seen the demise of major companies ranging from Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic and Credit Suisse. Some say that this is a crisis. However, it seems more like a…

I hesitate to write this, as it is controversial. But then I am not afraid to confront controversy. After the tragic implosion of Titan, the OceanGate submersible submarine that was doing the deep dive to the Titanic … … emails came to light where the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, flagrantly disregarded warnings that the…

I recently hosted a meeting of C-suite bankers to talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in banking. It was a great discussion and my summary would be: it’s scary and exciting. As I blogged about the other day, AI may be our future or our doom. Which way do we look? The meeting had a theme…

Technology is making catfishing a new art form that is getting better every single day. What is catfishing? Catfishing refers to when a person takes information and images, typically from other people, and uses them to create a new identity for themselves. Therefore, I was struck by this when a tweet by my friend Dave Birch noted…

On the one hand we want order and control; on the other, we don’t want to be ordered or controlled. We want governance, but we don’t want to be governed. We appreciate structure, but we don’t want to have that structure tell us what to do. The issue is a basic one: how far can…

I did a search of “Jamie Dimon” the other day, and was intrigued by the results. It reached everything from how cryptocurrencies are dangerous to Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender connected to everyone from Prince Andrew to Jes Staley, formerly with JP Morgan and CEO of Barclays. The search made me realise how much…

After Brexit, I hear and read a lot of negative things about doing business with Britain these days. The latest is Revolut complaining that Britain doesn’t like them. That’s not true. It’s more to do with Revolut cannot deliver their accounts on time (they blame the regulator for this) and cannot get the banking licence…