So this week I thought it worth posting a few reflections on 2010, the year that was, and begin with some thoughts on retail banking (tomorrow will be payments and Wednesday, capital markets). Surprisingly, retail banking has not had any really startling changes. Branches are still the focal point, as evidenced by Santander who increased…
I was quite intrigued to hear a speech by Ben Ramsden, Founder and CEO of Pants to Poverty. Ben's talk was all about social business which, when combined with social finance, creates a completely different and new form of commerce that, if the next generation has any say, will compete with and potentially merge with…
So to the really interesting question: if the industry is a polluting, festering, rotten and foul mess, should we try to shut it down? The reason I ask this is that this is the question that came up as I was writing yesterday's blog, debating the similarities between the banking and oil industries. If BP and…
I bet Venessa didn’t realise what she had started when she had her rant the other day, but I’m enjoying the thought process started by Venessa’s reactions to SIBOS, my reactions back and the reactions of the community reading these entries in their commentary and thoughts. In fact the commentary is great, and I appreciate…
SIBOS sparked two big conversations this year. Two separate conversations both targeted at fundamentally changing financial thinking. The first was the Long Now, which was all about how to invest for the long-term health of our planet. I’ve talked about that enough for the moment. The other conversation has been bubbling on twitter, and is…
So yesterday was an outsourcing day. Or rather it was a virtualisation and cloud computing day. Or isn’t that the same thing? Funnily enough, it was at a conference focused upon government issues in technology and information security, with lots of discussions about identity, secure email, information storage and data security best practices. On the…
You may think this blog title sounds familiar . It should be as it combines two key themes from the 2000s: the Death of Distance and the Digital Divide. One argues that technology has connected us all globally and overcomes distance which changes business models; the other argues that there are those who get digital…
Much of last week was focused on the Long Now and Long Finance for me. Working with a group of thought leaders that included Venessa Miemis, Thierry Touchais, John Hagel, Stefan Nusser, Michael Mainelli, Paul Saffo, Bruce Davis, Brett King, Nova Spivack and more, we debated big topic items all week. And yes, there were…
