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Bye bye banking job for life Many of the banking folk I meet have been with the bank as man and boy, woman and girl.  It’s a job for life.  Funnily enough, I’ve never known one of those jobs.  I guess it’s because I work in tech, and many of the tech firms I’ve worked…

An interesting week as R3 goes through restructuring.   Santander and Goldman Sachs leave and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, a regulator, join.  Interesting. Since R3 arrived on the scene in 2014, it has been a train of technology.  The consortium started on September 15, 2015 with 9 financial companies: Barclays, BBVA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia,…

I’m a big fan of Kraken, the digital currency exchange in California, as it’s my main exchange for investing in digital assets.  If you want to know more, checkout their general overview at the end of this blog.  I’m also a fan of their blog, which regularly sends me interesting stuff and they’ve just launched…

So here’s a story you’re gonna love. I did an American friend a favour and, to say thank you, they sent me $500 in the post in the form of a travelers cheque. Really generous, thank you, but what the hell is a travelers cheque?  I vaguely remember them, but weren’t they eradicated in the…

It was really interesting listening to Jamie Woodruff, The Ethical Hacker, talking about how he can break into anyone’s system.  It’s pretty easy when you know how.  His discussion shows just how easy it is, if you have confidence to con.  This reminded me of Tony Sales who spoke at the Financial Services Club three…

I’m losing track of the number of new banks that have announced they are launching in Britain.  I say there’s 40, but there appears to be a new one every day.  The latest one is Zopa, the P2P lender, who are branching out … not that they have any branches to begin with. So, from…

Just heard a really interesting point of view from Professor Tim Congdon, CEO of International Monetary Research.  He was putting a clearly positive spin from a City viewpoint on the outlook for Brexit.  He began by talking about Medieval times of doing business and stated that most financial activity took part outside the cities they…

As I look back on my travels this year, it’s interesting to see where I have and haven’t been.  Spent a lot of time in Singapore, Istanbul, London (obviously), New York and Washington.  I count these as my hotbeds of fintech innovation.  I’ve also briefly dropped in to Hong Kong, Berlin and Bangkok.  These are…

I heard this phrase – paranoia-as-a-service – for the first time recently, but I’m hearing paranoia in banking mentioned more and more often. It’s not surprising after the tesco hack, but what can you do about it? If banks are meant to be the most secure stores of value in this world, then how can…

  The highlights of this week’s blog include …. Look at financial inclusion for innovation I guess in concluding this weeks’ thoughts, I’m left reflecting on a similar idea to the one I blogged a couple of weeks ago about a world turned on its head.  This time it’s a different take on the same…