I present regularly to retail, commercial and investment banks, wealth managers and fund managers, insurance companies and more about how technology is transforming everything. I often can feel a sense of cynicism in the room. We’ve heard all this before and yes, I’ve pointed this out several times: The boy who cried wolf (FinTech style)…
Wired are really good at writing long, wordy essays on things they find of interest. I enjoy them, but not everyone has half an hour to read their musings. Therefore, as it covers my favourite FinTech firm Stripe, here’s a 1,500 abridged version of their 16 page, 5,000 word original (which you can read here)….
I remember years ago hearing the story of a start-up that wanted to be acquired by the big incumbent institutions. The founder was struggling to succeed, and felt that an easy exit through acquisition was the best way to go. The young CEO went to the big old incumbent company and said: “Hi there. Look…
Another theme that I talk about regularly, and that came up last week, is the FinTech relationship being like a parent and child. The parent wants safety and security and a nice stable home; the child wants to run around and kick and break everything, and challenge everything the parent thinks. That’s good, but it…
The 11th of November. 11 November. 11/11. Not 9/11 or 5/11. 11/11. For Europeans and Americans, 11/11 means the end of the First World War. The Allies sat down and signed the Armistice Agreement with the Germans at 11:00 (Paris time) on 11th November, 1918, in Compiègne and ended the War. Poland reappeared as a…
Twenty years ago, I worked on a strategy for the future of banking. My conclusion was that banks would merge with telecommunications firms and become hybrid institutions. Twenty years later, it hasn’t happened. But will it? It was interesting because way back then I worked for NCR which was owned by AT&T. AT&T, a telecommunications…
I often find myself in weird or frustrating situations that I don’t know how to break. For example, dealing with clients who require a Government Tax Residency Letter and multiple hurdles to be cleared before they can make payment; or dealing with American clients who want to pay me by cheque; or, worst of all, American clients who require…
At the conference I attended the other day, one speaker highlighted some InsurTech I’d not seen before but thought pretty cool. It’s a prototype service from Direct Line called Fleetlights. Fleetlights is an army of drones that light up the night skies and are designed to help people in difficult conditions, such as in a…
