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I was chatting about Unicorns yesterday.  I won’t say which one we talked about, but one specific firm was being picked on as unsustainable and incorrectly valued.  I was particularly surprised to hear that their cost of customer acquisition is estimated to be $400 per customer.  For a start-up firm …

Yesterday I blogged about the flagship lead of the Bank of England to support innovation and create refreshed central bank digital structures.  They are experimenting with everything from a Britcoin to a FinTech Accelerator program, and these operations have filtered through the system into RegTech programs from Project Innovate to …

I like to point at the fact that the Bank of England is taking a leadership role in FinTech, but it goes wider and deeper than this.  Bear in mind, the regulator –  the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) –  lies under the Bank’s control.  Before the Global Financial Crisis, it …

It’s August – the quietest month in business.  Everyone I email sends back an out of office autoreply, and yet I’m here still blogging.  So what to blog about?  Well, this month might be a little inconsistent, but I do love posting funny stories in bank branches.  The reason is …

Friend of the Financial Services Club and journalist with Financial News Anna Irrera has recently started producing a weekly roundup of FinTech news.  She’s kindly agreed to let me republish this summary here on The Finanser, so here goes: A good roundup of startups bringing AI to fintech…  From Algorithmic Trading To …

Here are our key posts for the past week … Need some #FinTech Education? I recently hosted the FinTech University – FU for short – for BBVA in Madrid. #FU @CIBBVA pic.twitter.com/RUqVEDgPgg — Chris Skinner (@Chris_Skinner) June 20, 2016 It was a grand day out full of BBVA companies and partners …

I recently hosted the FinTech University – FU for short – for BBVA in Madrid. #FU @CIBBVA pic.twitter.com/RUqVEDgPgg — Chris Skinner (@Chris_Skinner) June 20, 2016 It was a grand day out full of BBVA companies and partners including Simple, Holvi, Atom, Eris, N26 and more.  The whole day was filmed and …

After a month, the dust has settled somewhat on the Brexit vote.  We have a new Prime Minister, a new Government and a new outlook.  There were many knee-jerk reactions to the vote that were extreme in the immediate wake of the shock of the vote.  These ranged from the …

I just spent a weekend in Thailand at the Techsauce Summit.  It was a great conference, and it reminded me of the time I’ve spent in Asia lately.  After the books Digital Bank and ValueWeb were translated into Korean, Chinese and soon to be Japanese, I guess the region is …

In 2009, I coined the word BaaS.  No, nothing to do with sheep!  Instead, BaaS stands for Banking-as-a-Service.  In 2016, everyone is talking about this: Banking as a Platform (BaaP), The Financial Brand, March 2016 Banking-as-a-Service: Common play of banks and fintech, FinTech Rankings, March 2016 ‘Banking as a Service’ …

Talking with the leader of a large bank the other day proved illuminating.  He said to me that he could see the digital revolution happening, and wants to embrace it.  All well and good.  He continued then to say something that I hear quite often: “but what do we do …

Here are our key posts for the past week … Machines that learn will decimate human jobs … or will they? I was having a debate yesterday where a bank executive was asking me about what the hottest things in FinTech are right now.  My answer was machine learning (AI) …

WARNING WARNING WARNING This is a semi-technical blog update and it is rather long (20 minutes read). If you don’t like dealing with bits and bytes, you may want to turn away now. I’ve been meaning to also write a blog update on all things about blockchain for a while, …

As mentioned last week, the House of Lords gathered a number of leading people to discuss blockchain and its potential to develop a digital currency for the UK.  Brave New Coin summarises the whole affair nicely, and I want to keep this for the record, so have copied their update …

I was having a debate yesterday where a bank executive was asking me about what the hottest things in FinTech are right now.  My answer was machine learning (AI) and blockchain.  There are others such as contextual commerce, voice recognition and digital assistants, but machine learning and blockchain are top …