Shaping the future of finance
I was reflecting on the number of new companies starting new ventures in financial services, and wanted to quantify the numbers somehow. This cropped up because almost everywhere I go, there’s a fintech start-up or start-up challenge. Barclays has The Accelerator, SWIFT has The Start-up Challenge, Finovate highlights the hot new guys, Sberbank and Santander…
I was asked by a colleague the other day: “can you name two examples of successful strategies used in investment banking to differentiate and win”. My first reaction was to say that I could name several that were strategies to differentiate but lost, most of them with JPMorgan. It was JPMorgan that came up with…
It's obvious that gamification is a game changer – apologies for the pun. Gamification is huge. The games industry is bigger than the movies these days, with Call of Duty, Halo and World of Warcraft, leading the charge but we must not forget Angry Birds, Candy Crush and the range and reach of Flappy Bird….
I was surprised the other day when Financial News named me as one of the top 40 most influential innovators in financial technology, alongside friends including Sean Park, Matteo Rizzi and Nektarios Liolios. It is gratifying to get recognition, and places me amongst 30 London-based influencers of note. It is this latter point that is worthy of…
I've seen only three companies that really knew how to innovate to win. All three lost their way since, but they all had one thing in common: iterative innovation. Iterative innovation is a process whereby you plan a series of innovative deployments. The aim is to ensure that each time the competition catches up with…
We had a very succesfful third meeting of the Financial Services Club Nordic Region in Stockholm the other night (checkout what happened at the first and second meetings if of interest). The focus was upon innovation and, specifically, innovation in payments with presentations from: Lazaro Campos, former CEO, SWIFT; Richard Jones, Head of Industry Business Development,…
As mentioned yesterday, banks are not sleeping ostriches but are very awake to the digital revolution. In fact, many are investing in that revolution with four incumbent banks standing out on my radar for their investments in these efforts. The first of these is Sberbank, mainly because two friends of mine are running their venture…
In late 2013, we researched the views of how payments markets are responding to change. The results are intriguing, so here’s the management summary. If you would like a free copy of the report, just download here. In late 2013, the Financial Services Club ran an online survey, in collaboration with Cognizant and VocaLink, about…
In late 2013, we researched the views of how payments markets are responding to change. The results are intriguing, so here’s the management summary. If you would like a free copy of the report, just download here. In late 2013, the Financial Services Club ran an online survey, in collaboration with Cognizant and VocaLink, about…
I was watching this great advert documentary about Amazon on the BBC this week. It’s a rocking organisation that most of us mere mortals watch with wonder. From packing and selling books in a garage over the internet, it’s become a global behemoth (although Alibaba is bigger in China). Amazon generated almost $75 billion in…
