Fintech

I blogged in March (Transforming the bank – three phases of change) about the method to make systems change happen to transform the bank. In another conversation, I then realised that there are three phases of organisational change to transform the bank. The first phase is a recognition that the …

As those who read my blog will know by now I chair a very active group called Nordic Finance Innovation (NFI), based out of Oslo. Our last meetings were a great success and NFI rapporteur Danielle Pamela Neben did a great write-up afterwards. I’m guessing most of you will have …

I just chaired a nice session at the Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) focused upon the future of UK FinTech. For some reason, the question they asked us to focus upon was: What is holding the UK back in the global investment landscape? I didn’t really understand why we would …

It was Earth Day on Monday, and a national holiday in many nations as they observed what Christians call Easter. Whilst Sri Lankans mourned the fatal losses on the Easter Sunday church gatherings, many observed the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. One of the leading …

When I talk about FinTech, I often reflect on the first time I encountered what I would, today, call a truly FinTech firm. It was on March 30, 2005, and a newly formed firm presented at the Financial Services Club an idea. The idea was to connect people with money …

I picked up an interesting article from Reuters, about how Asian technology firms are moving into banking in a different way to Europe or America. The article says that Amazon and Alphabet / Google are far more interested in serving banks with cloud and advertising, rather than competing with them, …

Someone said to me recently that most tech Unicorns are more like Leprechauns. A Leprechaun is also mythical and magical but, rather than delivering riches, it just promises riches at the end of a rainbow you never reach. In other words, most Unicorns are offering riches that are as mythical …

During the weekend I presented the trends on FinTech and Tech Fin, my two favourite subjects. I’ll update on that shortly but I was also involved in a study the organisers – The European House Ambrosetti, a leading economics think tank based in Italy – conducted before the conference. The …

I find it interesting when I read perspectives on FinTech, money and banking. Going digital, getting rid of branches, becoming cashless seem to be the main themes, and yet this ignores that every part of the world is different. It’s hard to go digital if the country has little infrastructure; …

I used to blog about blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) almost once a week … four years ago. Today, I hardly blog about it at all. I guess it just shows what’s top of mind and what’s not at any time in FinTech and, right now, blockchain is not …

I was about to write a really nice piece about Apple’s announcement of the launch of a new credit card, in partnership with Goldman Sachs, when Brian Roemmele beat me to it. Who is Brian Roemmele you ask? And if you are asking that … WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? Brian is …

Not sure if anyone noticed that the Financial Stability Board – the world’s central banks tasked with maintaining financial stability – produced a white paper on FinTech last month. It was published on Valentines Day, so you were probably busy, and I only just stumbled across it. Here’s the Executive Summary. …

So, I blogged last week about women in FinTech and whether we care, and got lots of replies … from women … who said yes, we care. Interesting that there were not so many replies from the other gender, but hey what do you expect? One interesting insight is that …

A year ago I blogged about invisible banking and that I have some issues with it, namely that the bank brand disappears and the customer finds it too easy to spend without thinking. Now, I read more and more about embedded banking, contextual banking, frictionless banking and more, and I …

I’ve written quite often about Sexism in the City and am intrigued by discussions of diversity, or the lack thereof, in both banking and technology. Google and more have been told they’re not hiring enough women, and Amazon’s AI engine recently trained itself to ignore women’s applications based on historical hiring. …