Future

It turns out that 91 European banks are to be put through a ‘stress test’ to see how well or badly they will cope with a shock to the system. The stress test itself was a little unclear until late last week, when the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) …

Many interesting, weird and wonderful things drop into my inbox, Facebook newsfeed and twitter status updates. Take yesterday. I was sent: a copy of the BBA’s Annual Abstract of Banking Statistics, lots of notes from my accountant, various invites to press shindigs, a note from FatBoy Slim, who is an …

Spent a lot of time yesterday talking with folks about the future of money, payments and banking. The conversation got interesting in two particular areas: branches and mobile services. This is because I realised some things. Take branches. There appears to be an evolution of branch usage from underbanked economies …

I recently blogged a lot about 10,000 year thinking, the Long Now and how it relates to financial services. If you missed it, then here’s the info: The Long Now of Finance, Part One The Long Now of Finance, Part Two The Long Now of Finance, Part Three In fact, …

WARNING: THIS BLOG ENTRY WILL NOT CHEER YOU UP [sorry] I spent the morning with a group of futurists debating the long-term outlook for financial markets and am never sure about the usefulness of such debates, although there is definitely something of use in creating scenario plans for the future …

There’s the classic old joke about the European dream being a place where the police are English, the chefs are Italian, the car mechanics are German, the lovers are French and the bankers are all Swiss. The nightmare is that it is a place where the police are German, the …

Whilst I hid in Singapore last week, Finovate – the excellent financial innovation conference run by Jim Bruene and co at NetBanker – took place in San Francisco.  I wanted to go this year, as Finovate is definitely the one place you will find the NEXT generation of banking and …

Here's my latest retail payments focused presentation.  It's premise is that there's loads of innovation out there, with micropayments and iPhone apps being hotbeds of innovation for developed economies whilst microfinance and 2G GSM messaging being creative fields for developing economies.  However, all of these innovations are just froth on …

Today seems to be a day about future trends. For example, I stumbled across a great discussion about the future of the internet with Google CEO Eric Schmidt: This is a 45 minute interview with Mr. Schmidt at a Gartner Symposium in the USA last year. Key comments from the …

After my post last week about my latest presentation with an audio file, my keynote in Bahrain this week was going to be a variation of the presentation.  Due to being unable to fly to Bahrain, I mentioned on Monday that most of the day had been spent editing a …

Building on the World of Me post last week, I’ve just found out how powerful the tools are that are at our disposal today. This week, I’m meant to be chairing a conference in Bahrain: MEFTEC.  MEFTEC is now in its sixth year, and I’ve attended every year as a …

Going back to the idea that a bank could offer a widget-based business model of functionality and that everything these days is free, makes me realise exactly what tomorrow’s bank will look like. The thought struck me yesterday when I took my brother-in-law’s lad to see Clash of the Titans …

I haven’t posted a presentation recently.  Been a bit lazy, so here’s a bonus. My latest presentation on the future of (retail) banking: Branches are dead, the future is social View more presentations from Chris Skinner. And an audio file to go with it: Download Chris Skinner, EBF2010 (45MB) This …

As those who follow this blog know, I write regularly about services such as Facebook and PayPal. This is because they are disruptive and fresh, as well as being incredibly successful. For example, Facebook is now the world’s #1 website, bigger than Google. Not bad for a five year old. …

I was watching a program about Sandi Thom. Sandi was the girl who played music in her bedroom, put it on MySpace, got picked up by a record firm and became an overnight star with a massive hit: "I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)" …