Grid

Although most businesses fail in their first year, it is quite incredible just how many start-ups there are around the world doing something interesting with technology. According to Embroker: In 2016, 69% of U.S. entrepreneurs started their business at home. In 2018, there were 145 “active unicorns” in the U.S. collectively worth $555.9 billion. Unicorns are…

I’ve just been reading Jim Marous’s Digital Banking Report which ties in nicely with my new book Doing Digital, as the themes are similar. In Jim’s 70+ page report, Jim concludes that: “While there is an almost universal awareness of what needs to be done to digitally transform financial institutions, the progress is still slow to…

Another useful person in my online network is Steve McLaughlin of @FTPartners, who I spotted sent a tweet last week saying they had produced a challenger bank report. FT Partners’ in-depth report, “The Rise of Challenger Banks” now features an exclusive interview with Brandon Krieg, Co-Founder and CEO of @Stash – view the full report…

Varun Mittal, Associate Partner with EY, recently posted a couple of interesting slides about the launch of virtual banking licences to encourage challenger banks in Asia. If you’re not aware, there’s a great deal of digital banking activity across Asia. It’s not just in China, but there are notable things happening in Hong Kong, Malaysia,…

When The Financial Times does what they’re good at – covering financial markets and not technology – then they do produce some fascinating content. Case in point is the latest coverage of JPMorgan Chase’s (JPMC) 2019 results. The bank’s latest results are stunning, with the fourth-quarter profit soaring to $8.52 billion or $2.57 a share….

The main blog headlines are … Bye-bye FinTech I just spent time with a bank talking about Doing Digital. The host had read a preview copy of my new book and was asking a few questions about it. What had surprised me the most in my talks with five banks? What lesson was … What…

Just before Christmas I heard of a new European payments initiative called PEPSI, short for Pan European Payment System Initiative. Nice acronym although I prefer Coca-Cola, the Co-ordinated Car Co-operative Association. Or something like that. Anyways, whichever Cola you prefer, this new initiative is interesting. Backed by over twenty mainly French and German banks, the…

It’s a simple question: what is the purpose of a bank? However, the answers I get are often missing the mark, imho. I get answers like to fund business, to finance progress, to support government, to keep economies stable, to manage risk, to build communities, to allow people to be secure, to enable trade and…

I just spent time with a bank talking about Doing Digital. The host had read a preview copy of my new book and was asking a few questions about it. What had surprised me the most in my talks with five banks? What lesson was the most important one I learned? How important is it…

I sometimes write a reflective blog post or two and realised that the vision of the West Asian nations – some call this The Middle East, but that’s not right – is quite stunning. The aim is to move from their dependency on oil, and become self-supporting nations using new funding and new ideas to…