I meet a lot of senior executive teams of large banks. Some are visionary, many are committed and a large number understand that life is changing. Few understand how. I talk to them about the fintech world of change and how millennials are reshaping banking, from Stripe, started by two brothers who were 19 and…
I can remember 1984 well, as it was the year after David Bowie’s biggest tour for the Let’s Dance album, and also ten years since Bowie had produced an album dedicated to George Orwell’s classic book 1984. The album was Diamond Dogs, featuring time-tested tracks like the title track and Rebel, Rebel. The good old…
The main blog headlines are … AI and Best Execution: the Investment Bankers’ Dream Team I don’t often blog about investment banking as it bores my readers who are cool and trendy retail bankers and geeks, mainly, but keep coming back to this article about JPMorgan’s Best Execution AI engine, LOXM. LOXM’s job is to…
I don’t often blog about investment banking as it bores my readers who are cool and trendy retail bankers and geeks, mainly, but keep coming back to this article about JPMorgan’s Best Execution AI engine, LOXM. LOXM’s job is to execute client orders with maximum speed at the best price, by using lessons it has…
During the Asian Banker’s Retail Excellence conference that I attended recently, my friend Emmanuel Daniel posed the question: Who do you trust more: Facebook or the Government? Bearing in mind that this was in the week of the Cambridge Analytica leaked data storm, where everyone was screaming to #deletefacebook and Mr. Zuckerberg had to come…
I am struck every day by the disparity in financial structures I see worldwide. Recently, I’ve visited Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia for example, and am bemused how none of these countries has a strong mobile wallet operator. Instead, the nations seem to be 100% cash-focused, as my credit cards got hammered by their country’s…
I hosted a dinner focused upon Open Banking recently and what it means to FinTech firms and start-ups. There were no bankers at the table, but a lot of firms who consult, provide systems or are deploying new businesses in FinTech at the table. The general consensus around the table is that Open Banking is…
I’m not a financial analyst but a technologist and so, unsurprisingly, I got called out by some pedantic accountants over my simplistic assertion that Ant Financial is 35x more productive than banks like Barclays, as I was simply using their revenues per employee to make comparisons. Similarly, in previous discussions of platforms versus banks, using…
The main blog headlines are … The Big Digital Banks: JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs I was having a chat about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in banking the other day. It was an interesting conversation, although most of the examples were for customer service via Chatbots, which doesn’t impress me much. I know that systems like Erica,…
