Opinion

I just presented to the Merchant Payments Ecosystem conference. I’ve presented there before, and this year was virtual … as are all 2020 conferences. 2020 is the virtual year. I sat and thought about what to present. I have 1,000 slides or more, but I don’t do slides on lockdown. Too boring. I talk. So,…

I’ve spent a long time writing about how bad banks are with technology and digital transformation … but I’ve never said banks will be eaten by technology. So many other companies and industries are destroyed by technology, but banking is not one of them. I laugh when I read about The End of Banking, Banking…

When I was growing up with learning management skills, one of those I focused upon was marketing and Kotler’s 4 P’s. If you’re not familiar it’s all about product, price, promotion and place. It’s something easy to remember, but then most folks are hard pushed to remember more than three things. That’s a shame as…

I was invited to do a keynote for a Canadian conference the other day, but on a subject different to my normal digital stuff. The theme was sustainable finance. I decided to take a different tack and talk about my other big passion: purpose-driven banking. Here’s the presentation and transcript. Trust it makes sense ……

I blogged in April that banking is nothing to do with relationships, it’s about secrets. It’s more than this though, it’s about trust. Can I trust you with my secrets? This came home to me as, since then, a few people pulled me up over my whining about my bank. I’ve been whining about my…

I’ve seen a few big deals signed this month to get banks onto the cloud, such as National Australia Bank (NAB) switching to Microsoft’s Azure, and Deutsche Bank moving to the Google Cloud. McKinsey expect that cloud usage will rise from less than a quarter of banks business being cloud-based to anything between 40 and 90…

OK, no more politics … unless it’s important to banking, technology and fintech … and back to my usual boring diatribes. There’s been a discussion a while ago about making banking fun, gamifying finance and giving rewards for smart spending and saving. I was an advocate of such ideas, but now I’m not so sure. I’m…

I got an amazing reply to my post yesterday. I cannot say from whom – that’s part of the thing – but it’s such a good reply, I’m sharing it here. For me, it shows how the internet has changed the world – I can write a blog from Poland, get a reply from Hong…

I keep saying that I don’t want to be political on this blog – I’m not qualified and it’s not why you read it – but, as a human being, I cannot ignore things like Black Lives Matter, the lockdown approaches of different countries, the suppression of religious groups, the wars that continue (especially in…

I only just stumbled across this 124 page report from McKinsey and, building on yesterday’s free research from Deloitte, this report is all about digital transformation and replacing core systems, my favourite subject. Here’s the intro: Next-gen Technology transformation in Financial Services Financial Services technology is currently in the midst of a profound transformation, as…