Humour

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 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…

A banker and I were talking about the function of a bank.  He gave me the classic view: “A bank is there to take people’s money and lend it out at a profit, whilst ensuring the risk of non-payment is minimised” No it isn’t, I said.  I pushed the view that the bank is there…

I remember organising my first banking conferences in the 1990s and there was a regular mantra amongst the memes of the folks speaking on stage. There is more change coming and you’re going to be dead meat unless you change. It was a common theme to hear the word disintermediated being used in these speeches. …

I got a laugh the other day when I referred to Grade II Listed Banks, but I was serious.  For overseas readers, we have a system in Britain of listing heritage buildings.  They have various grades which restrict what you can do with them.  Grade I means you can’t really change the building at all, whilst Grade…

Tis the season to be jolly and, in that spirit, I thought it was time to update some of our Christmas songs.  Here’s the revised version of the twelve days of Christmas ….   On the first day of Christmas my big bank sent to me: A diamond in an APR loan.   On the…

It was almost December 25, Christmas, and Jimmy Diamond was a happy man for a change. Just this week his bank had opened 100,000 new customer accounts (even though only 25,000 people had visited the bank); they had managed to sneak an extra 1% onto credit card holders balances (without informing most cardholders explicitly of…

So here’s a story you’re gonna love. I did an American friend a favour and, to say thank you, they sent me $500 in the post in the form of a travelers cheque. Really generous, thank you, but what the hell is a travelers cheque?  I vaguely remember them, but weren’t they eradicated in the…

I got into a conference this week (for a change) where the presenter of a roboadvising wealth manager got into a bit of a Q&A scuffle with an audience member.  Felix Niederer, founder and CEO of Zurich-based start-up True Wealth showed the stats for their customers. Most of them are over 30, and the real…

Apparently, I am a miscreant.  I am the one guy who managed to break PayPal.  What?  OK, here’s the story.  The next 2,000 words tell the story but, if you’d rather miss that and cut to the chase, jump to the end. Most of my customers wire me the money.  American customers are more of…