Fintech

Through the years, I’ve seen a few changes in finance and technology.  We’ve seen dress-down Friday move to dress-down everyday (if you’re a Fintech firm); we’ve seen borders and barriers breaking down between ethnicity and sexual preferences; and we’ve seen globalisation of activities.  But the one thing we haven’t seen …

I was recently interviewed by Emerging Markets Review just before travelling to Korea in July.  The interview lasted a while, but stunned me when they produced the magazine with yours truly front page and centre.  Rather than saying anything more, here's the interview which you can download as a PDF if …

I’ve discovered lots of lists of Fintech unicorns.  The main list is from Jim Bruene; there's a nice list that is from a European's perspective by Bernard Lunn;  and a UK list published by me the other day.  In fact, in preparing some charts yesterday, I scraped the list of Unicorns and …

I find it interesting that so many bloggers on Fintech deride the banks for being slow, clueless or stupid.  So many blogs talk about how banks don’t do this, don’t do that; fail at this, fail at that; have no idea, cannot change; are stuck in the past or have …

It’s mid-summer and quiet, but there is some interesting stuff still happening, particularly when we talk about Unicorns.  Do you believe in Unicorns? Unicorns, in technology terms, are companies with valuations of more than $1 billion that have launched since 2000. 

I just attended a digital bank bootcamp in Singapore.  It wasn’t much of a bootcamp.  For example, I volunteered to play the Sergeant Major’s role and shout at the audience: “stand up, stand up, get your digital gear on and start delivering, you lazy lackadaisical wunch of bankers” … I …

Since asking a while ago who will be the Uber of banking, I’m fed up with everyone talking about the Uber of banking.  For example, two headlines caught my eye this morning: Visa Invests in Stripe to Prep for the 'Uberization' of Retail; and Will Uber be the Uber of banking? Both stories …

One of my good connections via social media is Huy Nguyen Trieu.  Huy writes a regular blog at Disruptive Finance, as well as being a Managing Director for Macro Structuring at Citi.  He posted something in the last week that I felt was worth re-posting here as a guest blog.   The …

I have this mantra in my presentations about payments.  Payments is being attacked by Fintech startups like Klarna, Square, Stripe, Alipay, PayPal (Venmo, Braintree) and more.  In fact, according to VentureScanner, it’s the second most active area for investors after lending (P2P and crowdfunding) …

So everyone’s excited about Fintech, but Fintech is nothing new.  Fintech is actually pretty old.  I could claim that if Fintech is about providing technology platforms to exchange finance, then that’s been around since banks first implemented technology platforms in the 1960s.  In fact, I do claim that banks are …

Following our regular weekly interview, the Finanser talks this week with one of Europe’s fastest growing unicorns, Klarna, in conversation with co-founder and Deputy CEO Niklas Adalberth,

One of the readers of the Finanser saw my write-up on asset and wealth management, and asked if I could talk about what’s happening in investment banking.  Answer: yes, I can. It’s more difficult to see the Fintech stars and unicorns in the investment space however, as it’s more opaque …

If asking what should we do about the Fintech disruption is the wrong question, what’s the right question? I would claim it is how can we change the bank to be a Fintech platform?  A good illustration of this is HSBC and its past, present and future.

I recently attended a conference in America, where the audience of mainly bankers could post questions to the speaker.  During the digital bank discussion, here are the questions that came in and, purely because they are fairly common in everyday dialogue, I thought I would post and answer the questions …

As the internet reinvents commerce on this planet, it’s interesting to see the two things that enter the innovation mix: simplicity combined with connectivity.  When you think about the Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Amazon and more, you realise that they have all simplified some complex things from sharing to finding.  …