Twenty years ago, I remember being impressed when the late, great David Bowie launched a bank. Admittedly it was backed by USA Bankshares, a proper bank, but the idea of celebrity-branded banks was expected to become a thing. Funnily enough, it hasn’t (unless you count Will.i.am and Atom) yet, nevertheless, what has become a thing…
… “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke This quote has stayed with me throughout my life. Every time there is a new technology, we start with seeing it with awe and wonder then, within a few months, we view it as part of the fabric of our lives. We take…
I spotted two updates recently. The first is the half a billion dollar mistake at Citigroup. The second is how Amazon created Amazon Web Services (AWS). The two pieces go hand-in-hand. First, how could Citigroup make a billion dollar mistake? User Interface. The mistake was made by a worker in their offshore service centre, who…
This week’s main blog notes include … Banks waste billions on digital How much money is wasted by banks on digital? I wonder whether, one day, anyone will work out how much money has been wasted by banks on digital technologies. Various reports reckon that banks spend anything from half a trillion dollars a year…
I blogged the other day about Singapore-on-the-Thames in anticipation of the Kalifa Review of UK FinTech. Today, the review is released so, here it is: Executive Summary Over the past decade, the UK has been quietly undergoing a fintech revolution – in jobs, innovation, improvements to people’s lives and in increased opportunities in global…
This is the tenth in a series of blogs about the elephant, which represents the economy, and the bird, which represents the future. Spring is in the air. The clocks are jumping forward, and vaccines are being given everywhere. We feel we are coming through the end of this dark tunnel of lockdown and I can…
I recently joined The Digital Growth podcast … powered by Sounder … and they kindly transcribed the conversation, so I thought I would share it here. Chris Skinner: Traditional banks tend to push products through channels to get greater share of wallet and cross sell. Whereas, digital banks start with the customer journey and…
How much money is wasted by banks on digital? I wonder whether, one day, anyone will work out how much money has been wasted by banks on digital technologies. Various reports reckon that banks spend anything from half a trillion dollars a year on tech to over a trillion. Two years ago, Accenture found that only…
I just got a report from PwC and my heart sank. The headline is: Financial institutions to significantly increase use of gig economy workers to upskill workforce PwC report suggests up to a fifth of future workforces in financial services could be gig employees The detail is: Importing the digital and specialist skill sets of…
