A year ago, I wrote a piece about Fin and Tech being like Father and Son. The thing that I was noting is the chasm between bank leadership teams, who are generally men over 50, and FinTech startups, who typically have young visionaries and significant diversity. It’s a theme I’ve returned to regularly. It is…
It was interesting to see the release of a discussion paper by the EBA (European Banking Authority) last Friday. As a regulatory body, they have decided that they need to take action on FinTech, and are asking for input on what action to take. The EBA is taking forward work in relation to FinTech and…
I was talking to a group of Treasury folks and the guy before me gave a pitch about the CFO of the future. The pitch focused upon how the CFO would be managing risk, incorporating different technologies, managing M&A, dealing with globalisation and so on and so forth. I couldn’t help but sit there and…
This week’s main blog headlines are … FinTech and the world of investment banking Some people talk about FinTech disruption and how payments and banking is being attacked and unbundled by start-ups, but we often look at banking too simplistically. Global banks and investment banks are far more complex creatures than their high street counterparts,…
Some people talk about FinTech disruption and how payments and banking is being attacked and unbundled by start-ups, but we often look at banking too simplistically. Global banks and investment banks are far more complex creatures than their high street counterparts, which is why we’ve seen far less disruption in corporate, commercial and wholesale banking…
I had an interesting experience in Lebanon recently, where the accepted currency is the Lebanese pound or the US dollar. In fact, the US dollar is preferred as, since the civil war in the country, the Lebanese pound has been tied to the US dollar at 1500 Lebanese pounds per dollar. Everywhere around the country…
I was trying to find someone who was optimistic about the future age after robots. Most are pessimists, and I’ve referred to them a few times now. They think the world is coming to an end and that mankind will have nothing to do when the robots do everything. Can the robots do everything? Certainly…
There are lots of reports of robots taking jobs from humans, and our fear for the future world of no work. One paper from researchers at Oxford University predicts that 47% of American jobs are at “high risk” of computerisation over the next two decades. Another research report issued in 2015 by McKinsey Global Institute found that…
The Turing test, developed by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Although there had been numerous claims that Eugene Goostman passed the Turing test, that simply is not true. Let us just say that he cheated the test in a lot of ways (further reading). …
