The main blog headlines this week are … Why we need to define: ‘challenger’ bank After my recent blog about challenger banks, I received an interesting email from David Parker challenging the idea that a start-up is actually a challenger. Chris I continually argue that Revolut is not a challenger bank – it does not today…
I’m off to Chile next week and thought, in preparation, I’d look at the state of FinTech in Latin America. So far, I’ve spent fair time in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, and see these as the three major centres of activity along with Mexico. Equally, I meet a lot of the LatAm companies in Miami at…
KPMG’s Pulse of FinTech report came out this week. It makes for interesting reading, especially as investment in FinTech has raced ahead to levels unseen before. Globally, $57.9 billion was invested in FinTech firms in the first half of the year. These figures were slightly inflated by the $14 billion funding round by Ant Financial…
After my recent blog about challenger banks, I received an interesting email from David Parker challenging the idea that a start-up is actually a challenger. Chris I continually argue that Revolut is not a challenger bank – it does not today have a banking licence. If you want to say any prepaid card is a challenger bank…
A few years ago Jamie Dimon was renowned for saying that bitcoin developers “are going to try and eat our lunch” and that silicon valley was coming to get the banks. Three years later, it’s not quite the case. The big banks are getting bigger, and the FinTech community is nibbling at the ankles and not…
The main blog headlines are … Does the Fed putting America First destabilise the rest of the world? I see a strong need for global regulatory co-ordination. In particular, in a globalised world with a global network where everyone can connect and transact in real-time, anytime, anywhere, the idea of national regulators regulating a system…
BACS released UK account switching statistics this week, and it makes for interesting reading. The big winners in the first quarter of 2018 are Halifax, Nationwide and HSBC. The big losers are Co-operative Bank, Lloyds and Barclays. Why? Well, Halifax offers a great incentive to switch: £75 … nothing like a bribe is there? Nationwide…
I regularly come back to the topic of bank branches, which are topical. A recent UK headline said that a town is now branchless … Closure of Lloyds leaves this Warwickshire town with no banks … whilst another says that the closing of branches is all about increasing profits for the banks … The cashless…
Ever since the collapse of Enron, we’ve seen auditors under question. I’m sure most of you can remember the Enron disaster but, just in case, the company went from Energy King to Futures Basketcase faster than Lewis Hamilton could catch up with Sebastian Vettel yesterday. Much blame was placed on their auditor, Arthur Anderson, who were…
