Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

Future

Banks should advise customers on the do’s and don’ts of social networking

Banks miss a trick in not advising customers how to network socially with safety, so here’s my top do’s and don’ts for social networking. It’s not exhaustive, but just those that are top of mind and banks would do well to send such advice to their customers in writing, online and always when they logon…

Future visions in video

As anyone who tracks this blog knows, I love all things futuristic.  Via Rob Findlay I discovered this video yesterday from Corning Glass … … apart from being the perfect family in the perfect house with the perfect lifestyle, I thought it was pretty good. As is this one, demonstrating the future of mobile (back…

Banking on Angry Birds

Ever since I got my iPhone, I’ve been hopelessly devoted to Angry Birds, along with about 75 million other people. 75 million! That’s 75 million playing a game on their smartphone. That’s more than the whole population of Britain all playing Angry Birds. Wow! How did that happen and what’s it got to do with…

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Banking in 2020

I’ve been asked recently to think about banking in 2020. That’s ten years away and, if we cast our memories back ten years, it’s quite a leap. Ten years ago, we had lots of themes bubbling away including customer-centricity, technological leapfrogs through internet banking, increasing pressures on branches and branch sell-offs to reduce costs, cost-income…

Health

A new banking system for social life

Some time ago I was having a debate about social networks and the problems of where they overlap with professional networks. For example, when I first registered on Facebook, I connected with everyone I knew – family, friends and business acquaintances. The result is that I have a completely messed up Facebook life, where I…

Six key technology developments for banks in 2011

Looking at technology specifically in financial services, there are many that are being cited as hot for 2011: More social media developments as firms like Foursquare, Groupon and Quora add functionalities not seen before; More bank mobile apps, with clever structures and device-specific security; The creation of new retail payments structures, as Apple and Google…

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2011: The Banking Year Ahead

The Banking Year Ahead. Sounds like some sort of swear word but no, it’s all to do with predictions time. What are the big events of 2011 going to be? Barack Obama begins the campaign trail for election 2012. North Korea ignites a battle with South Korea that sees a distance divide between China and…

A few predictions for 2111 …

Welcome to 2011 and I hope you all had a lovely, jubbly holiday. I did … sitting around eating lots, drinking lots, getting nice presents lots, being with family lots, watching TV lots, not being on twitter or blogging lots … oh, what fun. And so back to work … and being first day back,…

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Inspiration for #Wikileaks DDoS hive

I was following the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on Visa, MasterCard and PayPal closely during the supporters campaign to target those financial firms who had cut any ties with Wikileaks. The group amalgamated under a twitter hashtag #operationpayback, and posted a variety of notes about who to target when and how, with clear…

The Establishment is just PANTS!!!

I was quite intrigued to hear a speech by Ben Ramsden, Founder and CEO of Pants to Poverty. Ben's talk was all about social business which, when combined with social finance, creates a completely different and new form of commerce that, if the next generation has any say, will compete with and potentially merge with…

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