I was invited to talk to some City folks about using data analytics for trading. It made me pause for reflection, as I’ve been talking about analytics for trading for a long, long time. Twenty years ago in fact. Back in the 1990s, we were taking about object oriented programming, …
Read More »Will the last COBOL guy turn the banks’ lights out?
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 …
Read More »Banks do dad dancing (badly)
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 …
Read More »A brand new Clearing Bank for Britain
I recently hosted Nick Ogden, the founder of WorldPay and serial entrepreneur, at our Nordic Finance Innovation meetings in Stockholm and Oslo. Nick is now launching the first new UK clearing bank for over 250 years called ClearBank. I’d heard a few rumblings about ClearBank, but hadn’t really go the …
Read More »Could banks be the consumers’ data champion
Someone made an interesting comment about Google this week: banks can attack Google’s soft underbelly. What? Google? Soft underbelly? And banks can attack it? You must be joking. The presenter (Conor McAleavey, Chief Innovatoin Officer with Leveris) went on to outline what he meant and, as he talked about it, …
Read More »Barclays Africa and their co-creation projects
I saw a really interesting presentation in Kigali at the Dot Finance Africa FinTech Summit from Yasaman Hadjibashi, Chief Creation Officer with Barclays Africa (soon to be something else). She began with a discussion of the make-up of Africa: By 2050, it is expected that the population will double from 1.2 …
Read More »Africa is leap-frogging the financial world with mobile
Expanding on yesterday’s discussion of how MNOs are sweeping up business for the underbanked and unbanked, Igor Pesin of Life.SREDA posted a lovely update giving even more detail. Here is how he saw things … Fintech in Rwanda: the place where Telcos are surpassing Banks in the financial sector Telcos …
Read More »MNOs sweep up Africa at the banks’ expense
During the discussions at Dot Finance Africa, there was a very interesting dialogue about the mobile network operators (MNOs), with panels featuring Airtel and M-PESA. It was interesting to hear them talking directly about how they focus upon the customer experience and their singular objective of convenience. Both MNOs talked …
Read More »We need some education (but no thought control)
I often think we need a reality check when it comes to digital finance. Many of the pundit analysts and influencers out there believe no one needs a branch visit and that everything can be done remotely on devices. I don’t. I’ve mentioned this many times and, psychologically, customers need …
Read More »What should be priority for banks
I had an interview with .BANK domain the other day. Here’s how it went … .BANK: In your book, The Future of Banking in a Globalised World, you explore the impact of regulatory change on the banking industry. With the move to less regulation in the U.S. almost guaranteed in …
Read More »Money Sandboxes Research
I recently had exposure to two industry reports that are worth bringing to your attention. The first is the Innovate Finance research into Industry Sandboxes. Commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK regulator, the aim was to identify how Industry Sandboxes, rather than Regulatory Sandboxes, can help to …
Read More »Welcome to the Semantic Web
Last Friday, I presented a new theme around the Semantic Bank to the The Next Web audience. I also wrote a bit about it the other day here. I thought I would expand a little more on the background to the Semantic Bank by talking in more depth about artificial intelligence, machine …
Read More »What banks can learn from Wal-Mart
I picked up Bloomberg Business Week at the airport this week, attracted by the cover. Wal-Mart have issues with the digital revolution. Amazon is stealing their lunch, literally, and they’ve been struggling for years to work out what to do about it. As a giant gorilla of grocery stores, the story …
Read More »Why organisations resist innovation
One of my good friends at 11FS referenced Conway’s Law the other day. I wondered what it was, as I know Moore’s Law and the Law of Diminishing Returns in economics, but Conway’s Law? What’s that? It’s a thesis created by Melvin E. Conway, a computer programmer, back in 1968 …
Read More »Financial Services: The Next Generation … where is it?
I’ve blogged about how I see leadership in the developing (developed now) economies of China and India, and the new innovation models of emerging economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, but not quite in the way in which I see them now. The more I think about it, we have three major …
Read More »