Opinion

I’ve had a few meetings with folks at the White House over the past eighteen months, which has been an honour and not something I felt I should blog about.  The National Economic Council woke up to the FinTech world early last year and have been consulting with many in the FinTech ecosystem.  The latest…

Whilst almost 500 banks failed in the USA between 2008 and 2012, only three new banks opened. Only three new banks have opened in the United States since 2010.  Before the financial crisis, over 100 banks set up shop each year, on average, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the agency that approves…

During one part of my recent conference activity, I asked the banks in the audience how they organised their innovation strategies.  All of them have one, is the good news.  All of them have different nuances of how they structure for innovation however.  The most common structure appears to be to have innovation under the…

I chaired a really interesting debate yesterday between MP John Redwood and former MEP Baroness Sharon Bowles at the Association of UK Payments Institutions conference.  The discussion was should we stay or should we go, or the Brexit if you prefer. John Redwood has spent years as a Eurosceptic, standing against John Major in the…

There is a lot of talk about blockchain.  A lot.  Loads.  But when you get past all the talk, what is actually happening with blockchain?  Answer: not enough. I say this because there are some stand out firms out there – like R3, Digital Asset Holdings, Ripple – who have gained traction with the banks,…

As you all know now, this week sees the release of my new book ValueWeb.  Yes, you can buy it from today on Amazon or any of the other services you use.  It’s released in UK from March 15, and USA from April 7 (this is due to publisher getting hard copies to distributors before it…

I had a few wake up calls in my years of working in financial services, and a couple of key ones gave me an insight into the mentality of major financial firms that have stayed pretty true ever since.  The first was working with a major bank on a process re-engineering project.  We had narrowed…

I was talking with some friends and realised suddenly that we had not talked about branches or branch automation for a long time.  In fact, and this was the dawning, we haven’t talked about branch of the future for a long time. Branch of the future. It’s almost laughable writing that down today, and yet…

I was asked the other day about what’s on the CEO’s agenda?  Revenue, restructuring, regulations, share price, bonus, wife, mistress … whoops, sorry, I digress. In fact the four key areas top of mind with most bank CEOs are: Competition: and that’s not just interbank competition, but also new competitors in the form of challenger…

So Apple Pay finally launched in the USA on October 20 and there’s been mixed reviews.  Some people couldn’t make payments, whilst some found they were double-charged.  However, these are just teething issues and the overwhelming reports are positive.  Even former Apple CEO and Financial Services Club keynote speaker John Sculley: I think Apple Pay…