Grid

This week’s blog discussions include … Is George Orwell’s vision coming true? 1948, 1984, 2030 We talk a lot about FinTech. Some of us then break it down and talk about InsurTech, WealthTech, TradeTech and more. But do we ever zoom out? What about just tech? What about just a digital world? It’s funny as…

I’ve been writing and thinking a lot about ESG – Environment, Sustainability and Governance – as it’s the theme of my next book. Then up popped a headline: Prince Harry and Meghan are joining Ethic, a fintech asset manager in the fast-growing environmental, social and governance space, “My husband has been saying for years, ‘Gosh,…

I just stumbled across a great article about ethical banking. We can call it socially useful banking or green banking or whatever, but it’s all about a bank’s role in society and the scheme of things. Are banks doing the right or wong things? My gut feeling is that banks have been doing the wrong…

I was reflecting on the fact that we work in our silo. Our silo is banking or FinTech or InsurTech or WealthTech or RegTech or whatever. What about HealthTech, FarmTech, PharmaTech, GovTech and all the other industries digitalising? What about if we linked them all together? That’s what future trends are indicating: an integration of…

There’s a movement to use data to track and trace every human on Earth. It’s an inexorable movement which citizens are allowing as they sleepwalk into George Orwell’s vision of 1984. The Ministry of Data brings together every bit and byte of your life, and monitors your activities. China has been leading this march towards…

1948, 1984, 2030 We talk a lot about FinTech. Some of us then break it down and talk about InsurTech, WealthTech, TradeTech and more. But do we ever zoom out? What about just tech? What about just a digital world? It’s funny as I see HealthTech, FarmTech, GovTech and more, and sat back the other…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Is there a good way to shut a customer down? My mate Dave Birch wrote a Forbes piece the other day titled Unbank the Banked. I thought it was going to be a story about how banks are ejecting thousands of customers due to poor onboarding. Instead Dave…

I’ve recently shared a couple of quotes from years ago that gained a lot of social media traction. First, in 1953, Mark R. Sullivan of Pacific Telephone & Telegraph said: “In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It will require no dial…

I’ve been watching the headlines related to Joe Biden’s pick for the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). OCC is an interesting department, as it can issue national bank charters for US banks, and often runs into trouble. By way of example, under the previous Administration, the OCC tried to…

Talking of Open Banking, I hosted a dinner focused upon Open Banking and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) in London the other night. The conversation was with neobanks and challengers and was an interesting mix of old and young views. For example, someone opened by saying that BaaS and Open Banking has hardly delivered anything. It’s disappointing and clearly…