Grid

This week’s main blog headlines are … How difficult is financial inclusion? There were lots and lots and lots, literally, of focus upon mobile and financial inclusion in my Sudan conference. I guess because only 4% of the adults who live there are banked. You heard me, just four percent. There are over 20 million…

There were lots and lots and lots, literally, of focus upon mobile and financial inclusion in my Sudan conference. I guess because only 4% of the adults who live there are banked. You heard me, just four percent. There are over 20 million people of working or retirement age in the country, so that’s just…

I sometimes feel like a really, sad person. I wake up every day wondering what’s new with tech, FinTech, the world. I go to conferences and, instead of delivering my keynote speech and disappearing, normally hang around to hear the other presentations, as I might learn something. Equally, I sometimes get invited to speak at…

I’ve recently noted a number of reports about Open Banking, with many published recently due to its imminent arrival on January 13, 2018. Source: IBM As can be seen, we have several different groups working on Open Banking. There’s the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) with Open APIs for payments, Open Banking regulations which are…

I was at a recent cybersecurity conference where the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) was talking about the threats we face today from the dark web. After Silk Road, much of its illegal business switched to Alpha Bay. The authorities took out Alpha Bay and Hansa business increased almost eight-fold overnight. The authorities…

Innovate Finance has been working with the Department of International Trade (DIT) on a report on blockchain and the future of financial services. The report was developed with the help of the Economist Intelligence Unit and is now available here. The Executive Summary is as follows: From Concept to Reality: How Blockchain will Reshape the Financial…

This week’s main blog headlines are … Proving digital transformation works for shareholder returns I wrote about the fact that digital transformation does not create greater shareholder value … yet … and then DBS announce that they are the first bank in the world to demonstrate the link between digitization and shareholder value creation on…

I was at a presentation where Robin Speculand, Singapore-based author and speaker, asked: Is it better to have a great strategy implemented badly or a bad strategy implemented well? Most people – about 4 out of 5 – raised their hand for the latter option. I raised mine for the former. We had a bit…

I recently  presented in Miami and BBVA were kind enough to summarise what I said so … here is their summation. Financial services of the future will be open sourced and real-time Chris Skinner closed Latin America’s top ‘fintech’ meeting with a prognosis: The financial services of the future will be open source and real-time…

For many years we have had discussions about bank branches and a branchless future. I personally don’t believe in a branchless future, but many do. And yes, there are many branches disappearing, much to the annoyance of those who lose that physical store. For example, America still has a large number of branches (32 per…