Future

As I walk around The City, I’m often finding new buildings, new developments and major erections rising around the Square Mile. On that latter note, I don’t mean Boris Johnston, but major new office blocks. Obviously, with Brexit, a lot of people would think that this would not be the …

Who wants transparency when you can have magic? Do you watch The Crown? If not, maybe you should as Series 3 is about to begin with Olivia Coleman, a great actress. The first two series weren’t bad either, with Netflix spending $130 million on the season (around $10 million per …

I was asked the other day about my worst prediction ever made. My answer may surprise some, but it was the view that intermediaries would disappear as technology takes over. I made that prediction about independent financial advisors back in the 1990s as call centres appeared. It didn’t come true. …

There are always questions about the future. It’s the only thing we don’t know. We don’t know what will happen in the future, so we ask lots of questions. What will happen when Amazon opens a bank? Will regulators create new rules about data sharing? How will quantum computing change …

I have this debate often: Why governments will fail to block the emergence of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Can you have decentralised exchange without centralised control? Is the world being democratised through technology? How do governments regulate a networked world? A world without money A world without government? … and …

I wrote a couple of recent blogs about the issue with finding good developers and attracting them to banks. The first, about the war for talent, made the statement: the main motivation of developers joining a firm is to solve interesting problems. The second, titled When code is art, how do …

No, I’m not talking about Francis Rossi but the issue of how to achieve sustainability. This came up during a lunch, where my lunch colleague had picked up on my discussions of sustainable finance, and started to debate how we could change things. The issue we agreed is with governments, …

Talking of Long Finance (see last week’s updates on sustainable finance), there’s some really interesting publications from the group that runs this program, in partnership with the Financial Services Club. This builds on the work of the Long Now. I wrote a long blog about The Long Now almost a decade ago, …

A big area of debate in banking that has been around since the 1990s is how to make banks more accountable for sustainability. I talk about this a lot these days as 71% of all Green House Gas (GHGs) emissions emitted on planet earth since 1988 came from just 100 …

A regular question that comes up is: When will the Fintech bubble burst? My claim is that it won’t under my watch, as this is as big a restructuring of banking and finance as the internet has been for commerce and trade. The latter change is still underway after a …

Whilst at the United Nations they had me doing various activities, one of which was a panel for UNTV. The panel comprised Elliot Harris, UN Chief Economist; Matthew Blake, Head of Future of Financial and Monetary Systems, World Economic Forum; and was moderated by Gillian Tett, Editor-at-large, Financial Times. You …

A key part of UN’s agenda for sustainability is the taskforce for digital financing. Officially launched in November 2018, around the same time as the UN’s Principles for Responsible Banking, the taskforce is specifically tasked by the Secretary General of the UN to look at how the financial system and …

I thought I would share my speech at last week’s UN meeting and the short version is summarised nicely by the UN’s press page: Chris Skinner, an author and commentator from the United Kingdom, discussed the promise of “fintech” — which integrates finance and technology — to extend financial services …

Due to various connections, I was asked to deliver the opening keynote speech at the United Nations High Level Political Forum last week (some coverage here). It was one of those rare occasions where I got nervous, looking out at the faces of dignitaries from nations all over the world. …

A lot of discussion at the United Nations, where I’ve been all week (blogging about that next week), has raised the question of Libra, the Facebook digital currency. I’m avoiding calling it a cryptocurrency, as it’s more a stablecoin that is focused upon transactions, which is why it has Visa, …