Future

In the UK, we talk a lot about The Nanny State. There’s this idea that government can be too controlling and demanding, and treats us like children and they are our nanny guardian. It reminds me of this sketch from Tracey Ullman … Jacob Rees-Mogg in #traceybreaksthenews and #traceyullmanshow @bbccomedy pic.twitter.com/C7sKOjlLGl — Tracey Ullman Fans (@TraceyFans)…

Yes, we’re all doing stuff from our home offices. I don’t know what your office is like, but mine’s quite nice. I like it. Until I noticed a strange smell yesterday. Didn’t know what it was, so I had to look around the room a lot, then suddenly realised … … there was an elephant…

I’ve talked about Global Processing Services, GPS, a few times now. They’re the power behind payments processing at several major start-ups like Curve, Revolut and Starling Bank. Anyway, during this crisis, I decided to have a chat with them in more depth and interviewed Shaun Puckrin, Chief Product Officer. You may find it enlightening. An…

I’m winding people up with blockchain this week. As I was doing that, a song came back to me on regular occasion. A song about Blockheads. I went back to the song and re-read the lyrics. It’s about Essex Boys back in the 1970s. Not quite the world of today, is it? But there is…

There have been two major announcements of women as leaders of banks in the USA in the past month. First, Citibank announced that Jane Fraser would be the new CEO and then Goldman Sachs announced that Stephanie Cohen would head up their consumer and wealth management operations. I noted that a few friends – Theo…

It shows what a complex world we live in within our financial markets. We debate whether companies should get involved in politics, but banks cannot avoid politics. Banks are integral to governments and economies and, as such, are a political tool. Equally, banks choose to operate in markets that could be positive or negative to their…

I bumped into this article on The Economist the other day, which postulates that the existing financial system could be replaced. SWIFT, VISA, MasterCard and other regional and national systems like BACS, CHAPS, CHIPS, Fedwire and such like, were all created in the 1970s or thereabouts. They’re fifty years old. Nothing wrong with being old…

I recently saw the announcement from Santander of a foreign exchange service called PagoFX. It’s a service that goes head-to-head with TransferWise and is an interesting example of fighting back. As a result, I asked Victoria Yasinetskaya, CMO at PagoFX to tell me a bit more about what’s happening and she kindly wrote this piece for…

I remember someone made a comment at a conference a while ago, and it got a big laugh. An academic is someone who looks at something working in practice and wonders what it looks like in theory Hmmm. Does that mean: A practitioner is someone who looks at something working in theory and makes it…

After blogging the other day that big banks will never be replaced and they’re just playing a game of Pac-Man, I was watching this two-minute explainer of Michael Porter’s five forces from Harvard Business Review (a two-minute video):  The five forces are buyers (customers), suppliers, substitutes, new entrants and existing rivals. It’s an old concept…