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I hosted a banking dinner the other night, where we were talking about the FinTech scene in this particularly vibrant and innovative country.  It was under the Chatham House Rule, so I can’t say too much about who and where this dinner was, but it did amuse me half way through when we were talking…

I thought I’d wait until after the weekend to write a post about the implications of the UK election results.  It’s not my place to write about the pros and cons of the election campaigns, although I will say that the alienation of the elderly and those who are parents by the Conservative’s campaign –…

This week’s main blog headlines are … Digital banks are Copernicus banks (incumbents are with the Flat Earth society) Twenty years ago, I was working on re-engineering projects.  Most of the time I was getting exasperated because the banks wouldn’t take on the big projects, like the mortgage process, as it went across too many…

Twenty years ago, I was working on re-engineering projects.  Most of the time I was getting exasperated because the banks wouldn’t take on the big projects, like the mortgage process, as it went across too many divisions.  That’s big risk in their view, as it meant disturbing the structure of the organisation.  So, we would…

I recently hosted Nick Ogden, the founder of WorldPay and serial entrepreneur, at our Nordic Finance Innovation meetings in Stockholm and Oslo.  Nick is now launching the first new UK clearing bank for over 250 years called ClearBank.  I’d heard a few rumblings about ClearBank, but hadn’t really go the message until I saw him…

Someone made an interesting comment about Google this week: banks can attack Google’s soft underbelly. What? Google? Soft underbelly? And banks can attack it? You must be joking. The presenter (Conor McAleavey, Chief Innovatoin Officer with Leveris) went on to outline what he meant and, as he talked about it, I thought there may be…

I was really interested in a presentation by Benny Boye Johansen, Head of OpenAPI at Saxo Bank, at our recent Nordic Finance Innovation meetings.  In particular, he put up some slides that were both illuminating, amusing and strange.  They were Google Trends charts looking at Payments API, PSD2 and Open Banking. Google trends tracks the…

This week I’ve been mainly blogging about developments in Africa and China.  Thoughts on Dot Finance Africa … We need some education (but no thought control) I often think we need a reality check when it comes to digital finance.  Many of the pundit analysts and influencers out there believe no one needs a branch…

I’ve written a lot about Ant and Alibaba, but not so much Tencent, even though QQ social networking in China was a hot, hot topic a few years ago.  It was the first social platform to launch its own currency and, with 300 million users, was quite interesting.  Things have moved at a pace and…

I’m hearing murmurs of a financial crisis rising again.  It’s just rumours and gossip, but sometimes there’s no smoke without fire.  My forecast for another major global financial crisis was that it wouldn’t occur until the 2040s but, as James Dimon noted, a financial crisis generally appears around every seven years.  Not a big one,…