Future

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 to more people in ways…

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. In the row in front…

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, MasterCard, PayPal and Stripe as…

Building on yesterday’s blog about reports that are useful, I just found another one from UK Finance (formerly the British Bankers Association) on how they see AI in banking, released last week. The report is in two parts that address what they see as the two key issues banks face in using AI: they see…

I’ve been involved in finance and technology for a long, long time. Originally, I was a technologist; then a financial technologist; and now a FinTech guy. However, I see the FinTech piece as being irrelevant. Whether it’s FinTech or TechFin, it’s all still just finance and technology. The difference is that instead of being separated,…

Over ten years ago, I started blogging about cloud computing and financial services. Many banks dismissed the idea back then as “the regulator wouldn’t allow it”. Then the regulator did allow it in some countries, but banks were confused about the regulatory position. For example, if they use cloud services for customer data and the…

Following on from Facebook’s announcement of its own digital currency Libra, the key regulatory body of banking – the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – which sets standards like the Basel capital reserve requirements, has stepped into the debate and produced a report on their view of the threat and opportunity of Big Tech to…

Looking at the world of the future, we all wonder what will happen to work. Will we still have jobs? Will all the dumb jobs disappear so we no longer have call centres (replaced by chatbots and avatars); accountants and auditors (replaced by AI algorithms); Uber drivers and hotel check-in staff (replaced by robots); and…

I’ve blogged a few times about Facebook planning to launch a currency … Will Facebook become the world’s central bank? If Facebook launch a cryptocurrency, will US government shut it down? … and the fact that most regulators won’t like it. In fact, there are already questions being asked in US Gov about their plans,…

My mate Ron Shevlin is on good form these days. He’s written quite a few columns on Forbes that are clickbait: Customers don’t want digital banking The FinTech fast follower fallacy (which I spotted just after writing this yesterday) His latest created quite a twitter furore and was targeted at Monzo’s launch in the USA….