Are banks serious about fintech?
I’m often asked how I got into FinTech. It’s an interesting question as I’ve been involved in Finance and Technology all of my life. Back in the day, it wasn’t called FinTech. It wasn’t cool. It was just boring old tech in banking. Interestingly, for almost a quarter century, tech in banking was all about…

Over the next decade, over $2.5 trillion will be generated by blockchain trade
I just saw a report from the World Economic Forum, who estimate that over $1 trillion in new trade will be created through blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies (DLT) over the next decade. They also estimate it will reduce the global trading gap by $1.5 trillion. Bold claims. Here’s the key paragraph from their report (for…

How Lehmans collapse started the FinTech fire
It’s interesting that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) sparked by Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008 sparked the FinTech revolution, according to some. I personally think FinTech was bubbling away before the GFC but, certainly, the GFC led to massive investment focus upon changing the system (almost $100 billion since 2010). Equally, the collapse of…

A third of banks expect to hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets
I received a really interesting report from the law firm DLA Piper last week. The report is focused upon how blockchain is changing the financial services markets around the world, with the aim of establishing the position of major financial institutions with regards to cryptocurrencies and the use of blockchain in their daily operations. The…

Financial Institutions Aren’t Prepared for the Digital Revolution
I recently did an interview with my American friend Jim Marous over on The Financial Brand. It’s a good interview so I thought I would post my answers here. Feel free to comment! Your newest book, Digital Human, is obviously an outgrowth from your two previous books, ValueWeb and Digital Bank. What is the biggest…

Loans processing for just thirty cents per application (thank you coders!)
I enjoyed the LendIt conference in Shanghai, and wrote a few notes. In particular, I enjoyed hearing the story of XWBank as told by Jiang Hai, the Vice Chairman. His presentation was in Chinese but, from the simultaneous translation and slides, I picked up some interesting stats. To begin with, I woke up because the…

























