Humour

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.  …

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 …

I go to too many conferences and have my very own list of Bingo Buzzwords including apps, APIs, analytics, blockchain, cloud and more.  There are four specific words that are used often however, which make my crawl a little.  The reason is that I don’t think anyone knows what they mean …

Well, like all of you, I wake up this morning to find that the UK has decided to tell Europe to fork off.  You probably think I’m going to blog about what it all means and the implications for financial markets (I did that the other day and back in …

I just had a really interesting, off-the-record, discussion with a banker. Can’t give too much detail therefore, but here’s how the conversation went: “So, what’s it like working for MegaRetailBank?” “Shocking”, he said. “They are completely branch focused. Here’s an illustration. They launched a new retail bank subsidiary in a …

I recently talked about the oncoming internet developments that follow the internet of things, from the internet on demand (3D and 4D printing) to the internet of robots.  A colleague came up afterwards, and said I was daft to talk about robots.  It’s science fiction he claimed.  I disagreed as …

It’s amazing what you stumble across on the internet. I was looking for some bank news the other day, when all of a sudden cropped up this clip from the 1940 film The Bank Dick (Detective) with the famous drinking actor W. C. Fields. I’m posting it partly because the head …

I wake up today with the usual massive dump of emails, two of which looked a bit suspect.  The first is from DHL, saying my shipment is cancelled.  I don’t use DHL and expect no shipment from them, so delete it.  The second is an email from Transport for London …