Future

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 debate that topic, as the…

In closing this Earth Day week, I thought I’d rectify yesterday’s depressing news about banks funding the end of our planet to talk about the banks that are doing the opposite. In fact, there are many initiatives that are trying to create finance for good from community currencies to Long Finance. These are also themes…

I’m not a particularly political person. Opinionated yes. A little bit right and little bit left, maybe. Not necessarily a centrist, true. And I try to avoid writing about politically motivated movements on this blog, except when they impact the banking industry. And today is one of those days. Continuing on the Earth Day theme…

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 to people who needed 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, whereas Alibaba and Tencent have…

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 and magical as the beast…

I was once again reminded of the stupidity of passwords when locked out of yet another service that I use maybe once a year. When I decided to reset the password, once again my iPhone offered to set up a strong password that it would remember for me. Once again, I opted to not have…

I was lucky enough to be invited to a conference of the great and the good managing one of the large economies of Europe the other day. It was in a fine location, with lots of dignitaries, media coverage, security guards and German shepherds. On that last point, the dogs, not guys herding sheep. Anyways,…

I find life interesting. Themes recur over and over and over again. Will big banks survive? When will we, will we be cashless? Oh when, will we, will be branchless? Can we really replace the City with a trading network of algorithms? And more. One of my favourite recurring themes is when will we have…

I was in conversation with a banker the other day and we got around to regulations and regulators, as many conversations with banks tend to do. There were some interesting reflections in that dialogue, however. I guess it falls into three categories: the way regulations used to be; the way they are; the way they…