Future

I was having dinner with a friend the other night, when he asked me: “what do you think about the fast follower strategy?” I said it was stupid and doesn’t work. He then added that the major bank he’s working with are proud that this is their strategy. Now, here’s the funny thing. That strategy…

I’m a technology lover. Always have been, always will be. To me, technology is like magic. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke Too damn right Arthur. I love technology. But then I got to thinking about what technology is doing to us. To me and you. To humans. Is technology…

During Money 2020 Europe, I bumped into a chap from Monzo. No names mentioned, but he was buzzing and no wonder. The start-up has just boomed through two million users and is growing at over 60,000 account openings a week or 10,000 per day. Some think that number seems high, but they may have missed…

I was having a breakfast meeting with a banking friend who had recently been through a tortuous experience. His start-up had been acquired by a major traditional bank, and it ended with blood on the floor. The start-up got squeezed into the Empire, and it literally was like something from Star Wars with the start-up…

I’ve been struggling for a while now. My struggle is that I love flying around the world, seeing new places, meeting new people, finding new things … but I hate polluting the planet. This was brought to a head this week in a back-to-back meeting on sustainable finance that made it abundantly clear we’re screwing…

So my snarky little friend Ron Shevlin wrote a piece on Forbes claiming that Americans don’t want a digital bank. As the guy who wrote the book Digital Bank you might think I would take offence to such a statement, but no. I agree with his content, just not his headline. His content states: 10…

Reading about FinTech unicorns and pizzas worth $80 million, you would think that the world was bubbling over with wealth. FinTech investments last year peaked at over $110 billion, more than double the year before, and IPOs for firms like Uber and WeWorks are seeing valuations in the stratosphere. Everything is just yummy, yea? Nah….

After my recent blogs about Earth Day, Banking for Humanity, the FinTech Parent-Child relationship and Gen Y and Z: Doing good for society and the planet (an Earth Day FinTech update) Doing bad for society and the planet (an Earth Day banking update) Banking for Humanity? FinTech and the Parent-Child relationship Are you focused on…

Some bankers took exception to my calling them some of them morally bankrupt and socially useless. I’m not surprised, as I used those phrases intentionally to be provocative. Equally, I wasn’t saying that all bankers are corrupt and useless, just some. Some big names, but not all. Equally, I have said that some banks are…

Another few articles I’ve picked up this week have focused upon the new generation of consumer: Gen Z. I would call them the iGen but that’s too branded, so marketers call them Gen Z. Who are the Z Gen? As of 2019, the breakdown by age looks like this: Baby Boomers: Baby boomers were born…