Future

In the midst of Brexit plans and a Covid pandemic, the UK Government launched a FinTech review chaired by Ron Kalifa. I’ve met Ron at a few conferences, when he was CEO and then Chairman of WorldPay and will find it interesting to see what he finds. “The intention of …

I was on a call the other day, discussing Big Data and Green Finance. It’s not an area I talk about much, although Green is more and more on the radar. Even big bank CEO’s are aware of it and the issues that go with it. So, what’s new? Well, …

I’m working on a new book project. You might have spotted the themes in my recent blog entries but, if not, it’s all about purpose. The tagline is: if you don’t stand for something, you fall down, and is focused upon stakeholder capitalism. ESG, CSR and all that stuff and more. So, I’ve been watching …

I guess I’m not the only one who is sitting at home, watching the world go by and thinking: life is pretty weird right now. Watching virtual concerts and binge watching Netflix series is fine, but you see a nation in meltdown, storming their capital city’s buildings, everyone running scared …

Someone asked me to elaborate on the links between banks, government, the economy and society, and this was well illustrated by the video I shared the other day of James Pierpont Morgan, who founded the JPMorgan empire (see end of this blog entry). That all began with learning the banking …

I’m a Simple guy (?), but realised the other day that the consultants, research firms and technology behemoths do a great job of dressing up old ideas in new clothes. This hit home when I was reading the IT priorities for CFOs in 2021 by Gartner. Gartner’s survey asked finance …

During the summer and autumn of 2020, I ran an online survey of banks and FinTech firms around their view of physical versus digital access to banking. Obviously, in 2020, digital access to accounts has come to the fore but what was interesting is that this had not been a …

I stumbled across a bunch of interesting reports this week, so thought it worth sharing them First, from Deloitte. Admittedly, it’s from October 2020, but it is useful as it tracks the state of digital banking post-COVID19. There are also some interesting charts, so let’s begin with the key takeaways. …

It’s a big moment when one of the most respected bankers in the world Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive of JPMorgan Chase which is one of the most highly valued banks in the world, says that he is “scared shitless” of FinTech. This is a $3.4 trillion banking goliath …

I was really surprised how popular the Elephant became last year. In fact, he seems to have a fan following, so much so that one of my friends who runs media in Europe, Rik Coeckelbergs (The Banking Scene), asked if he could interview the elephant. Here’s what happened … Predictions for …

A year ago, I invested $1,000 in bitcoin. Today, that’s worth $10,000. OK, I made those figures up. I actually invested and have invested and keep investing in bitcoin and, more importantly, ether – the currency of Ethereum – in which I have more confidence for the future. I don’t …

Andreesson Horowitz’s Chris Dixon shared a presentation about crypto and blockchain during the holiday break.  Interesting, but is it good? Not sure, but I’m not going to make big predictions about tokenisation, regulation and the price of bitcoin in January 2022. Instead, I asked Janis Legler  to do this. …

I was looking for any decent reports on the big tech trends for 2021 and first of all  stumbled upon an interesting report from 2017. This was for the World Economic Forum, who surveyed 800 experts on their views of the key technologies for the future, and found seven major …

As regular readers will know, I quite like Global Processing Services (GPS), the payments processing firm behind many of the leading FinTechs I deal with. So, when they sent me their views of 2021 trends for FinTech and payments, how could I resist? Enjoy! Four Predictions for Fintech and Payments …

There are lots and lots and lots of reports and predictions for 2021 in banking. The one I liked the best is the report from Standard & Poor’s (S&P, see end of blog) about the impact of the crisis in 2020 and the outlook for banking in 2021. It’s a …