Future

Now that’s a contentious title for a blog, but purposefully so. Old banks can compete in the new world if they’re smart … it’s just that so many of them are dumb. Dumb with data, as I’ve blogged before. To illustrate this, I have three examples. The first is that …

I just got into a debate with a friend about the future of the world. Dangerous to get into a debate with a futurist, but hey, I upset her. My premise is that the world is globalising and will continue to do so. Brexit, Trump, trade wars, Syria, Yemen and …

It’s been interesting to watch the development of Facebook’s Libra project. As I expected, regulators hate it and are asking lots of questions about it. Most seem to want to ban it. And now PayPal has dropped out of the original founding team, with Visa and MasterCard rumoured to follow. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

I enjoy being around bankers who have been immersed in the industry nearly all of their lives and hearing their war stories. I heard two stories recently from a retiring banker, and thought it worth sharing to show just how far we’ve come. This friend started life in international banking …

The term The Internet of Things (IoT) was first used twenty years ago. Twenty years later, IoT is emerging rapidly. We have our cars and homes networked but, more than this, we have gadgets like Google Home, Siri and Alexa. Amazon has taken this even further with services like Key …