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Fintech

Is it Fintech or Techfin (Part One)

In conversation with bankers and start-ups, it is clear that there is a differing view of the world.  It is not as clear-cut as nimble innovator versus dinosaur incumbent, which is how many portray this chasm of difference of thinking, but there is a difference in thinking.  It is a radical difference in thinking, and…

Digital? Not when it’s Material!

I blogged a short while ago about Roboadvisors, and with the recent stock market meltdown due to China’s economy slowdown, it’s interesting to see today’s Financial Times talking about the impact on these fledgling firms. According to the FT, the emergent roboadvisor market that includes Personal Capital, Betterment and Wealthfront, and now managing a combined $100…

Welcome to the Bankchain …

There’s lots of discussions about financial markets and their different structures.  Retail and commercial banking are likened to farms, whilst investment banking is a jungle.  Retail and commercial banking have dull products likened to chickens.  Look after them and they produce regular and predictable results.  Investment banking is just full of testosterone fueled animals that…

Who’s afraid of the big, bad bank?

I just discovered Thomson Reuters predictions for 2016 with two related to Fintech that stand out: There is no Uber of Finance Most Fintech start-ups will partner with or be acquired by banks Interesting.  I have blogged before that the Uber of Finance is the blockchain, so maybe don’t agree with that statement, but the…

Who wants to be a (Fintech) Unicorn?

  For the past year, there’s been lots of talk about Fintech Unicorns – start-up companies with over a billion dollar valuation launched since 2000.  Jim Bruene at Finovate – register for Finovate Europe with 20% discount using FSClub20 – wrote about so many Fintech unicorns in July 2015, showing the list increasing four-fold in just a…

10 Fintech predictions for 2016

There are a lot of Fintech forecasts out there but two of the best I spotted were by David Gyori and Pascal Bouvier, so I decided to take the areas I agree with most to provide a few headline Fintech predictions for 2016 of my own: #1 PayPal will be a primary acquisition target in…

2015: Time to Open Source Finance

Another key development of 2015 has been the open sourcing of bank services.  I’ve talked for a while now about Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) – first blog entry almost seven years ago – and this forecast that anyone in the near future would be able to build their own bank through apps, APIs and analytics.  The core of…

Start-ups have to start somewhere … but what happens when they grow up?

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…

Fintech by the numbers

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…

Alibaba’s secret sauce

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…

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