I’m very sceptical about competition in banking because I’ve been waiting for it to happen for too long. Back in the 1990s, I visited Australia that had just had sweeping reforms in banking to promote more competition. Zero affect. America’s biggest banks haven’t seen much change to their market share in the last decade, and UK…
A summary of the main blogs of the week … Frictionless Finance with FinTech Larry Summers, former director of the National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, writes a regular column in The Financial Times. His latest piece is his take on FinTech, which has the main headline that FinTech is taking away frictions in finance. …
Larry Summers, former director of the National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, writes a regular column in The Financial Times. His latest piece is his take on FinTech, which has the main headline that FinTech is taking away frictions in finance. Yep. The frictions are illustrated by things like interchange fees, the length of time…
I see that Donald Trump is thinking about bringing back Glass-Steagall style laws to the US banks. This would force the banks to separate and break up their operations between their investment bank and the retail and commercial bank structures. It intrigues me that this is being considered 18 years after the law was repealed, but why…
I was inspired to think more about the legacy challenge in the legacy economies when I saw this article by the inimitable Anna Irrera (she’s worth following if you’re on twitter). She was lamenting the state of US bank systems and how they’re hiring retired programmers just to keep the lights on. What really struck…
I’m regularly blogging and talking about the legacy economy known as America. This will irritate my American colleagues, but come on, which country still issues more checks (cheques) than the rest of the world combined? Which country took a decade longer to get Chip & PIN than most? Which country is still struggling to work…
This week’s main blog headlines are … Why organisations resist innovation One of my good friends at 11FS referenced Conway’s Law the other day. I wondered what it was, as I know Moore’s Law and the Law of Diminishing Returns in economics, but Conway’s Law? What’s that? It’s a thesis created by Melvin E. Conway,…
One of my good friends at 11FS referenced Conway’s Law the other day. I wondered what it was, as I know Moore’s Law and the Law of Diminishing Returns in economics, but Conway’s Law? What’s that? It’s a thesis created by Melvin E. Conway, a computer programmer, back in 1968 which states: Any organization that…
