Grid

The main blog headlines are … The failure of government (#coronavirus) I’m really frustrated between what the government is saying, the media is reporting, the behaviour of banks, the thrust of business and the reality of life. Governments worldwide are locking down and, at the same time, saying they’re going to help citizens and business;…

Looking back, the world should have locked down when China did in January. The reason we didn’t? Economics, business, commerce and the financial metrics. If we had? Well, we wouldn’t be suffering nearly as much now. But hey, hindsight is a great thing, isn’t it? One of the things that struck me during all of…

I’m really frustrated between what the government is saying, the media is reporting, the behaviour of banks, the thrust of business and the reality of life. Governments worldwide are locking down and, at the same time, saying they’re going to help citizens and business; media is telling everyone there’s help, support, money, aid out there;…

Someone asked me what the coronavirus pandemic means for the future of FinTech. I’ve blogged a bit about that already, referring specifically to this great presentation by Finch Capital: But equally, you may think that times are dull and boring, locked in at home and nothing going on, but there’s loads happening. Critically, what’s happening…

For most of my adult life, we’ve been part of the European Union. The Brexit vote came as a shock, and the unravelling of Britain from Europe for the past four years has been a major stalemate in British life and politics. Now, the whole euro project might come tumbling down, so maybe the Brits…

A lot of things seem irrelevant right now, as we sit in the dark of a crisis, but life will go on and things do go on. It therefore intrigued me to see that Accenture has just performed a survey around purpose-driven banking. Purpose-driven banking is something I started writing about almost a year ago…

The main blog headlines are … Will you avoid companies that put profit before people? I’ve been writing a lot about purpose-driven banking, a theme that resonates around the idea that business focus should be more than just making money. It should also focus upon doing good for society and the planet. So, I was…

I remember some years ago that Nikolas Sarkozy wanted to bring in a law that would force call centre operators to tell French citizens where they were located, due to the backlash over offshore call centres. I wonder what he would make of today’s world, where most French and European banks have given all their…

There’s a great write-up by one of my guest contributors Alex Johnson, about the bad sales culture of most banks. Admittedly, he says it’s partly inspired by my blog of last year about challenger banks, but his write-up takes it further and has a swipe at the whole bank culture of cross-selling and being retailers…

I have a few favourite FinTech firms: Ripple, Prosper, Lending Club, SoFi, Zopa, Monzo, N26, TransferWise, Klarna, Stripe, Alipay, WeBank and more. A lot of it is because I knew these firms as fledglings and have enjoyed watching them grow up. One firm in this crew is Wirecard, the German bank behind many of Europe’s…