Opinion

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 the tech firms I’ve worked…

As I look back on my travels this year, it’s interesting to see where I have and haven’t been.  Spent a lot of time in Singapore, Istanbul, London (obviously), New York and Washington.  I count these as my hotbeds of fintech innovation.  I’ve also briefly dropped in to Hong Kong, Berlin and Bangkok.  These are…

I heard this phrase – paranoia-as-a-service – for the first time recently, but I’m hearing paranoia in banking mentioned more and more often. It’s not surprising after the tesco hack, but what can you do about it? If banks are meant to be the most secure stores of value in this world, then how can…

I guess in concluding this weeks’ thoughts, I’m left reflecting on a similar idea to the one I blogged a couple of weeks ago about a world turned on its head.  This time it’s a different take on the same conundrum.  We live in the developed economies complaining about legacy; developing economies are just excited…

I consider myself a citizen of the world.  I guess that’s because I fly around so much.  Everywhere I go, I find the same thing.  Warm, fantastic people who welcome me like a brother and complain about the idiot running their country.  This is common to every country, just that some idiots are more extreme…

A final thought on the future from a banking perspective.  So we will be colonizing Mars by 2040 according to Elon Musk.  Why?  Because this planet is not going to sustain the population it has emerging.  When I was born there were half the number of people on Earth that there are today.  Some say…

Well, finally we get to the part of this series I’ve been looking forward to writing about the most: space.  No longer the final frontier as we’re conquering space fast.  From landing explorers on Mars to capturing amazing images of Pluto, we have begun our journey to boldly go where no one has gone before. …

I’ve talked often and in depth about the internet of things and how this affects banking.  In the near future, when each of us has five, six, eight, ten things on the internet, we will be seeing a world where trillions of transactions take place amongst billions of things in real-time, not-stop and in very small…

Back to London after almost a week in Vegas.  Amazed I’m still writing.  In fact, amazed to be alive as Vegas is one helluva weird old town. As I’m leaving, I’m struck by an observation that has occurred to me before, but hit me big time this week.  Europe is boring.  America is dull.  The…

It’s the end of the first full day of Money 20/20 2016, and it’s been a mixed day starting with a surprisingly packed room for my discussion with Moven, Simple and ING about digital banking. The story of the fish seemed popular (see last week’s blog). Banks are like this fish. @Chris_Skinner #Money2020 pic.twitter.com/iHsR6PiQY7 —…