Fintech

I just spent time with a bank talking about Doing Digital. The host had read a preview copy of my new book and was asking a few questions about it. What had surprised me the most in my talks with five banks? What lesson was the most important one I learned? How important is it…

Looking beyond 2020, there has been a rise of quite a number of folks looking to the longer-term future. Here’s the key ones I’ve picked up on so far. First is Royal Bank of Canada with their Imagine 2025 series. Quite an investment and lots of interviews and insights. The main report talks about six…

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 months and up from just…

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 customers, but they never built…

I’ve blogged many times that so called free banking is a fallacy.  It’s something I have blogged about for a decade, and the recurring theme is free banking should be banned by the regulator as it’s only free as long as you don’t go overdrawn. The result is that the most financially challenged group of…

Back in 1997, I was tasked with writing a strategy for NCR. The strategy had to review the likelihood that other industries would enter banking and what threat or opportunity this offered. I spent a long time on this and concluded that the most likely outcome would be that telecommunications firms would acquire banks and…

I’ve noted that the bitcoin swings and roundabouts tend to often cycle around the hope and expectation of the US SEC giving approval to a bitcoin ETF … only to find that they never do and so it goes around. In an interesting article by Dave Weisberger on Coindesk, there may be a reason for…

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 even slightly. I swear to…

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 how Santander is making a…

I just spent a few days in bars and restaurants in a place where everyone lives underground. It’s called Toronto. A place so cold that even Olaf from Frozen has migrated South. In fact, it gets so cold in Canada, they actually have hair freezing contests. Anyways, sitting in a bar, I was privileged to…