Numbers

I’ve been in touch with Colin Iles in South Africa for a while now. Formerly the head of client strategy at Barclays Africa (ABSA), he’s now been working on a new bank called Capitec. I say new, it’s actually been around for 17 years, but it is interesting that for a bank launched in 2001…

Another presentation that was enlightening was delivered by Jean Claude Gaga, CEO of RSwitch Ltd, the national e-payment switch of Rwanda. Jean Claude gave an overview of how Rwanda is moving towards a cashless economy and I was particularly interested as I chair Dot Finance in Kigali each year, and so it gave me a…

For many years we have had discussions about bank branches and a branchless future. I personally don’t believe in a branchless future, but many do. And yes, there are many branches disappearing, much to the annoyance of those who lose that physical store. For example, America still has a large number of branches (32 per…

I wrote about the fact that digital transformation does not create greater shareholder value … yet … and then DBS announce that they are the first bank in the world to demonstrate the link between digitization and shareholder value creation on November 17. Interesting, as I blogged about this on November 16, inspired by an article…

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 lot about Blockchain, and feel…

I regularly talk about BBVA (Spain) and DBS (Singapore) as banks that are doing the right things for digital transformation. They both started early, have a leadership team who are committed and have been driving down this road with results. Results in terms of awards and recognition within the technology community, but what about in…

As Sweden was the first European country to use cash for payments back in 1661, it’s unsurprising that it’s the first European country that wants to be cashless. This is why, for several years, I’ve been watching the regular speeches by Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of the Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, talking about eradicating…

I find it interesting as we move towards Open Banking and Open APIs through regulations at both the UK and EU levels. The push is for data sharing with trusted third parties with user consent. All well and good, you would think, but several surveys point to it not being quite so rosy. The typical…

I’ve written a lot about legacy and the challenge of old systems, so it’s interesting to read a few press reports on said subjects. Yolanda Bobeldijk writes in the Financial News that 92 of the world’s top 100 banks still rely on IBM mainframes. Now that’s not an issue if those systems are well maintained…