Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

The true meaning of BaaS

Just spent a day chairing a payments stream at a conference. We talked about AI, biometrics, central bank digital currencies or CBDCs as everyone calls them, infrastructure, pipes, plumbing … you name it … but the bit that intrigued me was the views of Kristian Luoma from OP Bank, a member of the Nordic Finance…

Q: Do investors believe bank digital transformations are succeeding? A: No.

Anyone who’s read this blog since 2007 or my books since 2014 will know that I have a regular rallying call: replace core systems; refresh the bank’s technology stack to an open architecture; embrace APIs, apps and analytics; deep dive on data; transform to be digital and not industrial; rethink the culture and organisation; replace…

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Open Banking

I recently spotted a great write-up on Open Banking by Alex Johnson, who has kindly agreed I can republish it. So, here we go … The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Open Banking Distinguishing between what’s true and what we want to be true. Alex Johnson  Source: FicoFinTech The trouble with Open Banking is that…

Massive cyberattack on the US wholesale payments system (simulation but real?)

One report you may have missed was this one: CyberRisk and the U.S. Financial System: A Pre-Mortem Analysis from The New York Fed and released in January. The paper focuses upon a co-ordinated cyberattack on the wholesale payment systems of America and can be summarised as: We (the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s academics)…

The Finanser’s Week: 3rd February 2020 – 9th February 2020

The main blog headlines are … RegTech versus TechReg I often talk about how banks have five times more regulation than technology firms. That stat comes from Bank of America Merrill Lynch who published this chart a while ago: This is confirmed by similar charts, such as this one from Benedict Evans, a Partner ……

RegTech versus TechReg

I often talk about how banks have five times more regulation than technology firms. That stat comes from Bank of America Merrill Lynch who published this chart a while ago: This is confirmed by similar charts, such as this one from Benedict Evans, a Partner at the firm Andreessen Horowitz, who just shared his Davos…

And even if finance gets a #Brexit deal, equivalence is not the answer

Following yesterday’s discussion of Brexit and it’s implications on financial services, there’s a little more to be said on this. For example, every year at The Financial Services Club, we are delighted to host our friend David Doyle who, with precision-based analysis, talks us through the implications of EU Regulations on the Financial Markets of Europe….

Cashless shopping may be here … but a cashless society? Nah!

I was taken in by an article on the BBC yesterday due to the headline: ‘I wasn’t allowed to buy my burrito with cash’ The article recounts the story of Nicholas Duggan, a construction worker, who tried to buy his lunch with cash, but the store refused and demanded payment by electronic means. Interesting. Specifically…

Transparent climate-related financial disclosure

I write a lot about purpose-driven banking, and many folks came back to me saying that what I had written sounded a lot like community banking. Community banks stand for something, they have a purpose and much of it is directed towards their members’ interests and the local community. And yes, I did mean that,…