Innovation

Bye bye banking job for life Many of the banking folk I meet have been with the bank as man and boy, woman and girl.  It’s a job for life.  Funnily enough, I’ve never known one of those jobs.  I guess it’s because I work in tech, and many of …

I’m losing track of the number of new banks that have announced they are launching in Britain.  I say there’s 40, but there appears to be a new one every day.  The latest one is Zopa, the P2P lender, who are branching out … not that they have any branches …

I know I talk about banking and technology most of the time, but I also have other topics of interest.  Art, history, travel, fine wine … although I obviously look at them all from a banker’s point of view and wonder what it’s worth. All that said, one of the …

My presentations change every day, but I got a great new slide to illustrate the burning platform that banks sit upon.  This is the one I was blogging about yesterday, and the one area I blog about incessantly (so much so that I bore myself). But there is a burning platform …

I’ve spent decades preaching transformation and the easiest way to shut me up is ask: Where’s the business case? This is the question normally asked by the mealy-mouthed cynical financial controlling banker in the audience … They want the spreadsheet showing the cost-benefit analysis and return on investment figures.  The …

I’ve been talking the internet of things for a while as, after all, The ValueWeb is the internet of value that underpins the internet of things. A key concept of the internet of value is how it supports your television, car, fridge, shoes, phone, computer and your partners’ and chidlrens’ …

I’ve blogged a few times about GAFA – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon – as the worrisome Gang of Four.  Sure, we can worry about them, but the thing is to stop worrying and do something.  Australian banks decide to stop Apple by taking them to court; British banks would rather …

I haven’t blogged about InsurTech much, as this is a banking blog, but having started life in the insurance industry I guess it’s time to shine a light on this corner of the financial world. My first hearing about InsurTech, or InsTech if you prefer, was in a US conference …

During recent months, I’ve enjoyed a real ding-dong of conversations between Europeans, Asians, Americans and Brits about FinTech and, to be more specific, RegTech. RegTech is a couple of years in catch-up with FinTech, and is all about how to use technologies to make regulations more efficient and effective. The …

I’ve spent a lot of this week talking about marketplaces.  We have a growing number of financial marketplaces appearing.  Lending marketplaces, credit marketplaces, payments marketplaces and more.  A marketplace is the bazaar.  Market stall holders gather to meet with prospective clients, and the digital version of the marketplace is the …

Building on yesterday’s blog (Do bank’s need a CIO?) , the key misunderstanding is the role.  Most banks thing the CIO is there to run the technology.  They’re not.  That’s what they used to do.  That’s not the job for the future. First and foremost, the person leading technology developments …

I’ve blogged a lot about digital identities, but failed to cover an in-depth review of the largest identity program in the world: Aadhaar.  It’s been very remiss of me, but I’ve been waiting for the right moment and now seems to be that moment. Aadhaar is well known for those …

Building upon Friday’s discussion of how the system treats the poor, there are interesting movements afoot at the Brookings Institute.  If you’re not familiar with Brookings, it is one of America’s oldest Think Tanks and provides independent research into social sciences, particularly economics, governance and foreign policy, for the US …

I didn’t realise until the other day that the Bank of England has a blog Bank Underground.  Finally, a boring old British bank with a blog.  Not a consumer bank of course – none of those blog – but a good old central bank. The Bank makes clear it’s not …

In 2009, I coined the word BaaS.  No, nothing to do with sheep!  Instead, BaaS stands for Banking-as-a-Service.  In 2016, everyone is talking about this: Banking as a Platform (BaaP), The Financial Brand, March 2016 Banking-as-a-Service: Common play of banks and fintech, FinTech Rankings, March 2016 ‘Banking as a Service’ …