Humour

There’s a quote I’ve stolen off John Oliver that bitcoin combines everything you don’t understand about finance with everything you don’t understand about technology. It’s a great line, and considering banking and technology are probably some of the most complicated things in our world, one that hits the nail on …

I get invited to lots of different events from speaking and moderating conferences to joining via Skype or WebEx to running webinars and tweetups. I had one of those the other day with Oracle, and they kindly wrote a summary of what we discussed. Enjoy and for the record, the …

Another musing whilst on holiday is that it is difficult to get into the head of a twenty- or thirty- something millennial when you’re a Gen X or Baby Boomer. In my head, I still think I’m 20 but, when I look in the mirror, I know I’m not. This …

I had a realisation the other day: banks are brilliant. Everyone says they hate banks, but I love them. In fact, I think most people secretly love their bank. They just don’t like to admit it. After all, when did you last change your bank? Not open another bank account, …

There are two big tech topics in banking these days, namely Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain. These two tech titans are changing the back office of banks into intelligent shared structures that will be mind-blowing a decade from now. In fact, they’re not far off that today. I’ve written a …

I was surprised to make a chance discovery about The Wizard of Oz.  The film with Judy Garland is firmly embedded in modern culture as a classic, but did you know that it was a rally call against the financial system when the book was originally written? It as a …

A long time ago, a man would go to work whilst the woman would stay at home. Thanks to a generation of change, women and men now work and no one has to stay at home. A long time ago, work was a place you went to and home was …

I posted this on twitter earlier and it’s proven so popular that I thought I would share with all.   The bank calls for an Open Banking meeting

I find it amusing to think about this age of self-service, where we take it for granted that it’s cheaper, easier and more personalised to your own wishes if you book it yourself.  And, for most of the time, that works well.  Except when you mess things up, like booking …

I regularly blog about the same subject, namely CHANGE YOUR CORE SYSTEMS.  Banks do a great job of not listening to me, but that’s because they’ve caught themselves in Catch 22: screwed if I change them and screwed if I don’t.  How did they get into this mess and how …

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 …

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 …

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 …