I met a Washington insider this week. During the banter, I mentioned how much better the European authorities are at beating up the US tech giants than the Americans. This is illustrated well by the recent New York Times feature on Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition commissioner. Ms. Vestager, 50 and a native of Denmark, is…
I got called out in one review of my new book Digital Human calling it a “futurist’s wet dream”, which I thought was a bit much. The reviewer doesn’t work in finance, didn’t like my views on science fiction becoming science fact, didn’t buy into the revolutions of humanity and felt the book was confused….
Another day talking culture, leadership and change for digital, and a fascinating review of the five things banks mess up when considering partnering. This presentation was from the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of a major European bank. The presentation was titled How not to screw up my next partnership – 5 lessons we learned, and…
My second and last day at Money2020 Europe was packed with networking, meetings, panel discussions, private events and more. Throughout the day, the themes of the first day kept bubbling over. I guess it was typified with the comment that the CEO of TransferWise announced how happy they are to be partnering with banks. This,…
The good thing about blogging is that I have a public record of my thinking. Hence, I can claim that Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) is mine. That’s because I was presenting the idea ten years ago and blogged about it in February 2009. Now, no idea is unique, and the BaaS idea was purely based upon the…
A month ago, I blogged about the problems at TSB when implementing the change-over of their core systems. Yes, core systems replacements are challenging, but they’re not risky when done right. Unfortunately, TSB’s change-over shows all the marks of how to get it wrong. Not only has it been highly public, with the CEO Paul…
I’ve used a statement for a while now about the competitive landscape of finance in the future. It goes something like: Banks have millions of customers, billions of capital and centuries of history, but are hampered by heritage; Start-ups have no customers, little capital and no history, but are driven by vision; whilst Tech giants…
So, I’m presenting at a Corporate Treasury event, and we get into talking about distributed ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain. Comments are made around so many tests and proofs of work and concept, but so little production. At this point, someone made the comment that it will happen from the ground up, as corporates start…
Back in the 1980s, Walter Wriston, the then Chief Executive and Chairman of Citibank, said that “information about money is becoming more important than money itself”. His successor, John Reed, said that “banking is just becoming bits and bytes”. A quarter century later, this vision of the future of finance has come true. By way…
