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Building on my recent thoughts, I cannot for the life of me understand how a bank can spend so much on technology and yet be so inefficient. By way of example, let’s take a bank cost-income ratio. That’s the measure of how much a bank spends to operate, and the profit it then makes. In…

This week was COP26 and so the Finanser had a two-track week. The usual updates, but also the COP updates. Here’s the usual track … Why challenger banks find it hard to challenge I was thinking about this article in The Telegraph saying what a rotten job supermarkets have made of competing with banks. Tesco…

Mark Carney stood up at COP26, alongside Larry Fink (CEO of BlackRock) and Jane Fraser (CEO of Citigroup). Together they announced that the financial industry has pledged $130 trillion of assets to solve climate challenges. Woo-hoo! Thanks. Trouble is that it’s a lie. Larry Fink and Jane Fraser run two companies leading the end of…

I often contact companies due to issues with their services. When I contact them, it inevitably means that something in their digital services has broken. It is then an opportunity to delight and provide a customer experience that exceeds exceptions. However, it normally means anger and annoyance as you wait on the phone for an…

Just in case you didn’t catch it, yesterday was the Finance Day at COP26. Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor, made a speech commiting the UK to be the first with a net-zero financial centre. Watch the speech:  Or, if you prefer, here’s the transcript: Direct the world’s wealth to protect our planet Good morning…

I had a few recent experiences that showed me how bad developments are in the digital world today. One was trying to cancel a subscription to a news app and, when logging in online, couldn’t find anything to show me the answer. The second was my bank who changed my international bank account numbers but…

The discussions of today’s COP26 interested me, as it’s all about the money. Today is the day that all of the world’s finance ministers meet to discuss their dedication to climate change. They had this before – in Paris six years ago they promised $100 billion to be given to poorer nations to focus upon…

IPO-yay! It’s Fintech Float Season 🙂 Investment bankers must be lining their pockets as Fintech Float Season has arrived. After a decade of FinTech developments with a few floats, of which the biggest have been companies like Square and PayPal, who were recently worth more than Goldman Sachs and Bank of America respectively. Now, there are…

Kate Mackenzie, who writes with Bloomberg Green, published a fascinating long-read article on Phenomenal World the other day. I wanted to publish the whole thing, but instead took some key paragraphs to share here. Maybe this is why, as Greta Thunberg said it, most leaders talking about climate change is just blah, blah, blah: The…

I was thinking about this article in The Telegraph saying what a rotten job supermarkets have made of competing with banks. Tesco sold its mortgage book to Lloyds two years ago owing to “challenging market conditions” and is now closing all personal current accounts. Marks & Spencer this year decided to close all of its bank…