Grid

This week’s main blog discussions include … FinTech in Africa: the State of the Nations I got this excellent update from FT Partners and felt compelled to share. What it should make you realise is that African Nations are leap-frogging the world. Enjoy! Executive Summary: FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and…

Highlights and links This week’s Guest Judge (and numbers nerd) Wasim Mushtaq former Transformation Lead, Financial Markets at Standard Chartered Bank, provided full transparency of his bespoke scoring system he applied – find out how our participants fared while they spoke about Amazon, Swift, Stripe, The White Stripes, Monzo, Musk, Karaoke, Iran, Russia, Zopa and lots more…

I got this excellent update from FT Partners and felt compelled to share. What it should make you realise is that African Nations are leap-frogging the world. Enjoy! Executive Summary: FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and internet penetration continue to accelerate, financial services in many African markets are bypassing traditional banking…

I posted a quote the other day on social media, remembering the old bank robber in America, Willie Sutton. You may not have heard of him, as it is almost a century ago but, during his forty-year robbery career, he stole an estimated $2 million. Today that would be around $35 million. He then spent…

Last year I invited Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, to write a monthly column explaining her motivations and methods. You can read those, and other climate and ESG related blogs, here. One specific column she contributed was asking how they could justify breaking bank windows. Extinction Rebellion lobbied HSBC and Barclays Bank specifically in…

One of my favourite series, Black Mirror, is about to return to Netflix for Series 6. So, it made me think about the future world and thought I would give an outline of an episode. I’m no screenwriter but … you never know. Black Mirror, Season 7, Episode 3: The Office I’m living in a…

I received a bunch of interesting pings this week, but a few stood out. The main one was about the climate impact of crypto: Ethereum has managed to massively decrease its annual CO2 emissions as it has moved to a proof-of-stake blockchain. In 2021, it was creating a huge 21.95 million tons of CO2, which…

This week we welcomed Ghela Boskovich as guest judge. Enjoy! Links to stuff we spoke about:- The wise guy might have been wrong about Apple buying Stripe but if they don’t IPO then someone might be able to soon as they explore future options Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and 4 other banks working together???…

Anyone who has attended a Sibos conference or similar payments meeting will have heard the buzz about ISO 20022 for years. The idea is that this will unite the global banking industry with a new standard for all payments messages. What is ISO 20022? ISO 20022 is best described as the future of financial messaging,…

I’m talking about KYC and client onboarding again in a February 1st webinar, hosted by American Banker. The onboarding of clients is the worst part of financial services, because it has an overly onerous requirement to gain proofs. Proof of address, proof of identity, proof of existence, proof of life. You name it. It gets worse…