Future

I’ve grown up angry. Angry with the system, angry with the world, angry with the way things work, angry with me. Not great, huh? I need some anger management. I meet people who are laid back, who are relaxed, who are chilled. That’s not me. I’m a troublemaker. A fire …

Yet another day of reflections – too many of those lately – and thinking about generations. My parents were war parents, living through the Second World War; their parents were people growing up in Edwardian Britain as a carpenter and housewife. Things were different. I don’t remember my parents struggling, …

I grew up in a village, miles from the nearest town. I moved to a city in the north after university and then to London for work. I enjoyed my work and yearned to travel. Luckily, my work allowed me to travel. I’ve been to more countries than I care …

There are five main themes driving where we are today and tomorrow: digital transformation; inequality and inclusion; having a clear purpose; stakeholder capitalism; and digital transparency. The network is connecting us all. This is a digital revolution. We are breaking from the past centuries of industrialising everything to the next …

Having watched the emergence of cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for a decade, I have made a firm view. Most of the people involved in this space are deluded and naïve; most of the people involved in this space don’t understand the system or how things …

I’ve claimed for some time that machines cannot do what humans do, because they have no heart. They purely do what we program them to do. True. Yet if you watch movies from Ex Machina to Terminator, machines can turn to do what they want to do once we’ve programmed …

I had a bit of a twitter spat with my friend Peter Matza, who has a background in corporate treasury. You can follow the thread from here: The total wealth of billionaires worldwide rose by $5 trillion to $13 trillion thanks to digital transformation and government stimulushttps://t.co/DyaBU46xaQ via @paullewismoney — …

I was thinking about run the bank, change the bank, and the challenges therein. Part of it was down to a conversation that repeats quite often about it being easier to launch a new bank than change the old bank. Something I’ve argued against regularly. Reason being: what are you doing …

I woke up and, as usual, checked the banking app for any updates or changes. There was a payment received.  Quite a major payment. It came from BIG NUTS ASS*. BIG NUTS ASS*? Who is BIG NUTS ASS*? I have no idea. I rang the bank. That took a long …

UPFRONT STATEMENT: I have crypto, but treat it as an experiment I attended an event in 2016 where Elon Musk was the star speaker. It was a good event, and he made sense. He doesn’t make sense anymore. Back then, I wondered if he was the 21st century’s real-life Tony …

I’m starting to worry about FinTech as they seem to have fallen foul of regulatory compliance and, as a consequence, customer trust. The biggest challenge for a challenger is to keep customer trust AND regulatory compliance. This is what we are seeing having consequences today. The fact I’m starting to …

Investment banking, Corporate banking, Commercial banking, Private banking and Retail banking are all very different. Too often, commentators just talk about ‘banking’. It’s not all the same. In fact, an awful lot of retail banking is propped up by investment and commercial banking. That’s where the money is made. Banks …

I am taken aback by the rise of ETH, BTC, DOGE and other currencies. What’s going on? Well, some of it is related to hype, notably Elon Musk; some to loss of confidence in fiat currencies, as governments failed during the crisis; some is related to the fact that banks …

I don’t know how your life has changed in the last year, but I realised how much mine had when I woke up this morning and thought must go and buy dog food. A year ago, I didn’t have a dog and my first thought would have been I must …

The climate activists of Extinction Rebellion expanded recently into a Money Rebellion, as I blogged about last Friday. Targetting the banks that pollute the planet – specifically Barclays and HSBC in the UK – they will hold a range of protests today, gluing themselves with locks to the entrance to …