Fintech

Someone asked me about getting return on investment in fintech. The discussion is about how many firms are actually delivering on their promise. So many unicorns are loss-making firms, and billion-dollar valuations on million-dollar revenues seems like a lot of hype. One article typified this feeling: High-society fintech under pressure …

Another lively discussion followed my meeting with the FinTech communities in Asia. It was interesting as we had a chat about all aspects of what was happening in South-East Asia, and the overwhelming message that came back to me was that the regulatory sandboxes had become sandcastles. What I mean …

Another regular argument I’m having is whether digital is a revolution or evolution. I firmly believe it is revolutionary. When industries are being rebuilt from the ground-up with new technologies and new business models, then it is a revolution. When we are living in an age where every human on …

I blog a lot about banks needing to change and adapt. I do not blog about the end of banks and I do not predict that banks will be destroyed. I do predict that banks that do not change and adapt will be destroyed, and I do predict that banks …

Good question, and it all depends on the revenue forecast. However, if you want to get an idea, a new survey from Moorlands Human Capital, an executive recruitment search and consulting company, has a view. That’s because they asked 500 FinTech companies how much they pay the CEO? And it …

I’m working on my next book already. Digital Human only came out a few months ago, and here I am off already on a new one. I’m not going to share too much about it yet, as it won’t come out for two years, except to give you some clues on …

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 …

I talk about 1,000s of start-up companies doing one thing brilliantly well, and was looking for an anecdote that might help me talk about this better …. and found one. It goes like this: A ten-year-old boy decided to study judo, despite the fact that he had lost his left …

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 …

I sometimes write blog posts that I actually disagree with. I write it to provoke reactions, and to test my own thinking. As a result, I think I usually annoy people in banks who read my writing but, instead, I actually get a quite a lot of compliments, for testing …

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 …

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 …

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 …

One other thing struck me as the discussions fired away in Shanghai at Lang Di … is China going to haemorrhage and bring down the world’s financial systems … or is that just what the Western media would like us to think? The reason I raise it is that I …

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, …