Future

I don’t get The Financial Times editorials these days. Last month, they published a ridiculous article about challenger banks eating the banker’s lunch – which I covered here as being the crumbs off the table of the banker’s lunch – and this month, they publish a totally contrary view that the large banks have steamrollered over…

Being conference season, there were many announcements in the past week about headlines companies wanted to gain with their innovations. One of the main headline grabbers for me came from R3. These included: Mastercard partners R3 … R3 and Infosys complete blockchain trade finance trial Wells Fargo’s Stablecoin ‘Faster, Cheaper’ Than SWIFT … Bank of America Joins…

I’ve been reflecting for a while on the shift of power from America to China, as those who read my musings will know. This is typified by the latest Netflix offering American Factory, backed by the Obamas. It shows the cultural clash between East and West and the rise of China as the new superpower….

During my writing about a purpose-driven bank, I tried to find good examples of what purpose-driven actually means. Googling the question the number one result is from the Plato Project, who outline eight great purpose-driven organisations. The list is: Whole Foods “With great courage, integrity and love,” reads the higher purpose statement of Whole Foods,…

I was a bit agog and aghast at the recent announcement from 192 US CEOs, who said that stakeholders are now more important than shareholders. This focus upon stakeholders has been an emerging trend for over the past quarter century and here’s what these great US leaders said: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation…

There’s a comment that has stayed with me for a long time. It goes along the lines of if you’re earning $10 million a year then spending $10,000 is only the same as someone who earns $100,000 a year spending $100. It’s just relative. This often strikes me as I travel around different luxury locations….

I was recently asked by Volante Technologies to consider what being a digital bank means, specifically for a commercial bank and, even more specifically, the bank’s payments and treasury services. After all most of the focus on digital banking and digital payments has been in the retail sector, where consumers are already accustomed to seamless…

I was talking with a senior banker, who told me that he was in charge of the Artificial Intelligence program in the bank. I was impressed as he is part of the executive leadership team of the bank and not the CIO. We have invested widely across the board in AI, he told me, and…

I finally hit the nail on the head about why you can’t have money without government. It’s because you can create as open a system, complex a platform, distributed an idea, decentralised a currency as you want but, unlike most industries, without some form of supervisory oversight the whole system collapses. So, when we talk…

Talking of diversity of views and strange conversations, I was in discussion with an American bank the other day and they asked me if Europe would survive this crisis. I thought they meant Brexit, and started waffling on about whiff-whaff and Boris Johnston but no, they stopped me mid-sentence and said the banking crisis. Banking…