We had a great discussion at the Financial Services Club Central & Eastern Europe (FSClub CEE) this week. Now in its fourth year of operation, the Club meets regularly at the residence of the British Ambassador in Vienna, Austria (see postnote if you want a laugh). The theme of the meeting was: “the future of…
We recently entertained Laurens Vis, Managing Director of KAS Bank London, to address the Financial Services Club. Here’s a manuscript of his speech which, to say the least, has some very key messages for the future of the Eurozone: “The Eurozone – the road to nowhere?” Introduction ‘The European Union or the Tragedy of the…
In case you didn’t see it, Wired magazine ran an article about Jack Dorsey and Square this month. Throughout the article, they compare Jack Dorsey to Steve Jobs and Square with Apple. In a long opening – the first page is just about pouring tea! – they finally get to the crunch so here’s my shorter,…
I’ve already given some reflections on last week’s innotribe meeting in my write ups of Metro Bank and Fidor Bank. Now, for a more general write-up, I’ve taken the inputs of Kosta Peric, the SWIFT innovation group leader who runs innotribe; the innotribe start-up details; and the input of participating company Allevo; to put together my own summary…
I’ve been struck by many nuances of culture and creed lately. There are many examples, but it all comes down to dealing with the customer as a unique entity, not some mass market. For example, why does Spain have so many bank branches? Spain has around 43,000 bank branches, about half as many as the…
We talk a lot about the threat of mobile carriers and telecom firms moving into banking and eating our lunch. We cite examples such as NTT DoCoMo buying a credit card firm or Safaricom becoming the biggest financial transactor in Kenya, and what that will mean to banking in the future. We see O2 and…
Having made the claim many times that banks are not great at multichannel but excel in a single channel, I got into an interesting debate last night with the CEO of one UK bank. He was asking whether branch-based banking had a future. I said branches have a limited future, with the megastore branch being…
I often use two discussion points by way of background when talking about the future. The first is that kids will show you the way, because children are rushing towards the future whilst most adults are rushing away from it. Children at 9 and three-quarters and 12 and half, whilst adults are celebrating their 31st…
