Googling PSD2, APIs and Open Banking
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…
The Boy who cried Wolf! (#fintech stylee)
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. …
The Grade II Listed Bank
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…
A Banking Carol
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…
An overdraft … is that someone who checks your first draft?
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…