Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

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My view of 2019

So, I’ve been summarising other people’s views of the year ahead from a variety of sources, but I also wrote two outline pieces for my friends at The Banker magazine and Jim Marous’s The Financial Brand. Just to finish off my week’s blogs about this year, here’s what I wrote. From The Banker: Why ‘real time’ will…

Crypto Forecasts for 2019

There has been a lot of thinking and rethinking during 2018 about blockchain, cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and everything digital currency related. I wrote about the challenges getting blockchains implemented for example, and was surprised to find myself enduing up as a network meme. The power of the pundit, ay? Last year we saw bitcoin drop from…

FinTech Forecasts for 2019

There are many pundits predicting change in banking and FinTech this year. Here’s a review of a few of the ones that have some depth. American Banker published seven FinTech predictions for 2019 by Bob Legters, Chief Product Officer of Banking and Payments at FIS. The seven headlines are: We won’t see the end of cash, but…

2019: The Year of Witty Protest

So yesterday, I gave you the top ten trends for 2019 from British Airways’ Business Life magazine. The article also discussed a range of other trends that are noteworthy, so here’s a quick summary of the other things to expect in 2019. 2019: The Year of the People This is the year of witty protest….

Ten Top Trends for 2019

Hello, hello and hello again. Welcome to 2019. A brand new, fresh, shiny year, and just out of the starting gate. Having said that, yes we are still talking Brexit and we still find a group of shady bankers knocking off billions. Same shit, different day, as Stephen King would say. Being a different day or,…

Come the revolution, who’s first against the wall?

I present regularly to retail, commercial and investment banks, wealth managers and fund managers, insurance companies and more about how technology is transforming everything. I often can feel a sense of cynicism in the room. We’ve heard all this before and yes, I’ve pointed this out several times: The boy who cried wolf (FinTech style)…

Are you pulling my blockchain?

I just gave a presentation on blockchain. I haven’t been asked to make a specific presentation on blockchain for over a year, so it meant dusting off some rusty notes and slides and thinking about where we are today. I know that last year, I spent most of the year saying that blockchain was in…

Asking banks to be responsible is like …

The United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking were released last Monday. The aim is to help any bank – whatever its starting point – to align its business strategy with society’s goals. It’s a nice idea, but is it practical? In a guest column James Vaccaro, Director of Corporate Strategy at Triodos Bank, walks us through…

Change the bank or change the leadership

I’m likely to be blogging about leadership all this week, as that was the theme du jour of our Nordic Finance Innovation meetings in Copenhagen and Oslo last week. Saxo Bank, DNB, Danske Bank, Nordea and more were discussing the challenges of digital transformation and the leadership challenge, and I’ve already started this series of…

Are you really ‘doing digital’?

I’m regularly asked why I don’t think banks are doing digital yet, and my answer consists of a series of steps. First, does the banks’ leadership team talk about digital, digital banking, digital investment and digital transformation? Invariably, all bank people tell me yes. OK, second, has the bank actually made any visible changes to…