Fintech

There are a number of hotbeds for innovation in finance – London, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley – may all spring to mind to begin with … but what about Berlin and Munich? Yes, Berlin is showing some interesting true colours with three standout start-ups: Fidor, NUMBER26 and solaris.  Two are full banks with banking…

I’ve talked about open sourcing banking and finance by converting everything to components (APIs) that can be plug and played into any front-end user experience (UX) through apps and devices, supported by data analytics, cloud and blockchain to reduce and automate the back office. All of this can be summed up as MoIP: the conversion…

I was reflecting on the demonstrations of Deep Mind against Go Champion Lee Se-Dol along with Watson at CeBIT and other artificial intelligence (AI) developments. It soon becomes apparent that we are evolving rapidly to a state where data learning through data analytics will be the battleground.  In fact, it is clear that the battle…

Just had a great discussion about data analytics and visualisation at the SWIFT Nordics Conference in Oslo.  During the discussion we talked a lot about data for risk management and how real-time tracking of payments could help identify suspicious activities from fraud and malware attacks to the possibility of AML and sanctions breach.  I couldn’t…

I am surprised how many new start-up banks there are in Britain.  My list so far includes physical distribution players such as: Santander (a challenger?) that moved to the UK in 2004 with the acquisition of Abbey Banco Sabadell’s acquisition of Lloyds spin-off TSB the soon-to-launch RBS spin off William & Glyn Vernon Hill’s Metro…

BBVA have made another bold move this week, acquiring Holvi. This follows hard on the heels of other significant moves, such as investing $60 million in digital first UK start-up bank Atom and the acquisition of Simple a couple of years ago.  From that acquisition, they now have re-hired Simple co-founder Shamir Karkal to build their…

I had a few wake up calls in my years of working in financial services, and a couple of key ones gave me an insight into the mentality of major financial firms that have stayed pretty true ever since.  The first was working with a major bank on a process re-engineering project.  We had narrowed…

I find it interesting when you look at the Fintech start-up scene and the hotbed of interest now in the blockchain.  There are 100s of companies attempting to do something in these areas, and it amuses me that my Beer and Bordeaux clash is even more notable in this emerging ecosystem. First, you have the…

We had a great debate at the Financial Services Club last night between digital money sage Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion, and all things bitcoin master Jon Matonis. The debate was about whether blockchain is faster and cheaper, and it was clear from the start that this was going to be difficult as the question…

So as I travel around these global conferences, startup challenges and Fintech daze, I often get asked: what does it take to be a Fintech centre?  This is because everyone wants to be one now that they’ve seen the buzz around the market.  London has vied to be that centre for some time, with Boris and…