Future

We spend much of our time berating the banks and beating them up, but it’s not always the case.  Every now and again, I like to write about the specific good that banks do.  For example, 5 of the top 10 Charitable Companies in the USA are banks: Wells Fargo …

I was piqued by Victor Matarranz’s [SEVP Head of Group Strategy and Chairman’s Office, Banco Santander] presentation at MoneyConf last week, mainly because he began by talking about Fintech 1.0 versus Fintech 2.0. Fintech 1.0 he defined as the emergence of peer-to-peer lenders and new payments companies between 2010 and …

The UK has had a long weekend considering the consequences of the Brexit. Chris Skinner has had a long weekend considering the consequences on London, the banking industry, Fintech and more … and I have to say that I’m quietly positive.  I don’t think we’re going to see the meltdown …

Well, like all of you, I wake up this morning to find that the UK has decided to tell Europe to fork off.  You probably think I’m going to blog about what it all means and the implications for financial markets (I did that the other day and back in …

I just discovered a really interesting legal view of the implications of the Brexit vote on the UK Financial Services sector.  It was in a magazine by Mayer Brown, a law firm, written by legal eagles Alexandria Carr, Mark Compton, David R. Sahr and Guy Wilkes and, as the vote takes place tomorrow as …

I get all sorts of crappy press releases from public relations managers who are eager to see me prostitute my blog for them. Rarely would I post their stuff here unless it was seriously interesting or I feel very lazy or both. You can decide which category this fits into: …

I caught sight of a report by Deloitte over the weekend that says the marketplace lenders like Zopa and Lending Club are no serious threat to banks.  This follows the report by Goldman Sachs a year ago, that said 20% of bank lending will move to these platforms over the …

I chaired a really interesting debate yesterday between MP John Redwood and former MEP Baroness Sharon Bowles at the Association of UK Payments Institutions conference.  The discussion was should we stay or should we go, or the Brexit if you prefer. John Redwood has spent years as a Eurosceptic, standing …

We had an all-day meeting on Friday about Digital Identity at the United Nations. There are almost two billion people born with no identity.  There is no record of their birth.  There is no proof of their existence.  As a result, these people can disappear without a trace. There is …

I was talking to a City chap this week about the Brexit vote and he felt it was clear we would leave.  I said I couldn’t see that because there was not a single logical economic reason for leaving.  He said that I was stupid to think of this as …

I promise to shut up about African developments after this post, for a while anyway, but there’s a definite feeling that Africa may set the standards for a cheaper, easier financial system in the future, as blogged last week.  In fact, when I was asked about Africa as a continent …

In a final post about African transformation through technology, I’ve covered the key themes: mobile financial inclusion, smartphone innovation through apps, digital currencies and blockchain identities.  One thing missed is a mention of the Water ATM. I hadn’t heard of automated machines for water being deployed before, although it started …

ValueWeb makes the contention that you cannot have an internet of things without a real-time and cheap internet of value.  A core part of this is focused upon building a cheap shared ledger structure for digital identity and digital currencies and guess what?  That cheap shared ledger is most likely going …

After writing about whether we are creating faster horses when we think of applying open sourced technologies to banking, some more thoughts occurred to me: Are we applying Blockchain to clearing and settlement, rather than reimagining the whole trade cycle from liquidity structures to collateral management using open source platform …

I’m often asked, as we move more and more to digital communications: what will happen to the people?  What will happen to the people?  As we move to robotics, automated agents, augmented and artificial intelligence, what will happen to the people.  If we have no branches, no structures and no …