Grid

I wasn’t going to post this blog but the more it sits in my head, the more I felt I had to write it. Like everyone I expect, I was really shocked by the Genoa Morandi bridge collapse that killed 43 people this month. The idea of driving happily along a major road and then…

I got into an argument after a presentation where I said that active fund management is dead. It wasn’t the best thing to say in front of a group of active fund managers, but I can’t help myself. It’s my background in dealing with program trading in the 1990s; then algorithmic trading in the 2000s;…

I just caught a clip from the BBC about Decentraland, a virtual world where you can buy plots of land and next year become part of a virtual world. This world will be owned by its community, has no central authority, is completely decentralised and will flourish in the net. So far it’s users to…

I’ve made the comment many times that it is astounding that around $2 trillion is laundered through the banks of the world each year, up from $1.6 trillion in 2009. It’s about 2.7% of global GDP and $1 in every $50 traded through our banks is criminally driven, getting washed through the complex structures of the…

I was having a debate about innovation with a friend. They said that most of what banks were calling innovation is actually business optimisation or, as I call it, incremental improvements. Incremental improvements are doing existing processes cheaper and faster, more effectively and more efficiently, with change. Easy areas to see how this can be…

The main blog headlines are … The secret to success with customer data It shows the nature of money and finance in our lives, in the way that the media reports about it. Quite often you get a scary headline like the big banks are watching you or banks will sell your data and it…

Venezuela is the latest country to spin into hyperinflation, showing the same signs as the meltdown in Zimbabwe that created the 100 trillion dollar note. Hyperinflation, as defined by economist Philip Cagan in the 1950s, is when a country sees inflation rates rise by more than 50% per month. Wow! Luckily, I’ve never been exposed…

It shows the nature of money and finance in our lives, in the way that the media reports about it. Quite often you get a scary headline like the big banks are watching you or banks will sell your data and it makes us mad. Replace bank with internet giants, and it’s not so annoying…

I’ve been thinking for a while now about building a new financial system from the ground up using AI, blockchain, the Internet of Everything and other technologies. What would it look like? What would we build? I guess the piece that inspired a lot of my thinking came from two sources: Alipay (as usual) and…

The World Economic Forum has been conducting research over the last year around how AI (Artificial Intelligence) will change banking that was published last week. Here’s the lowdown: Artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the physics of financial services. It is weakening the bonds that have held together the component parts of incumbent financial institutions, opening…