It intrigues me how often we have a conversation about innovation, and everyone starts talking about new technology. “Oh, have you seen our iPad app, it’s really hot.” “Sorry, but our Android apps beat that hands down, and Android is hot today.” “Yea, Android is hot today but forget all of those things. You need…
As mentioned the other day, we are asking some big ticket long-term questions at SIBOS this year, such as: When will we know that financial systems work? How will we know when financial risk is not an issue anymore? What will America and Europe be doing when the economic power balance has shifted to Asia?…
One of the big topics in capital markets is intra-day liquidity and post-trade transparency. Such discussions are far more noticeable now because the whole reason for this crisis, according to some, was the loss of trust between counterparties. That loss of trust was based upon counterparties not having enough liquidity to cover their positions. After…
Everyone wants to avoid double-dips and market issues, we want to talk up the economy and feel good, we want our glasses half-full and capital secure. And after this week’s bank results, you could be forgiven for thinking everything was back to normal: Lloyds Banking Posts First Profit Since HBOS Purchase… Standard Chartered reports a…
Spent a lot of time yesterday talking with folks about the future of money, payments and banking. The conversation got interesting in two particular areas: branches and mobile services. This is because I realised some things. Take branches. There appears to be an evolution of branch usage from underbanked economies through emerging economies to developed…
WARNING: THIS BLOG ENTRY WILL NOT CHEER YOU UP [sorry] I spent the morning with a group of futurists debating the long-term outlook for financial markets and am never sure about the usefulness of such debates, although there is definitely something of use in creating scenario plans for the future which is where we were…
There’s the classic old joke about the European dream being a place where the police are English, the chefs are Italian, the car mechanics are German, the lovers are French and the bankers are all Swiss. The nightmare is that it is a place where the police are German, the chefs are English, the car…
Inspired by three events this week, I focused on apps for my panel discussion today … and got shot down in flames for talking bollards. Harrumph. Here are the events, the logic, the proposal and why it got shot down. First, the events. Event number one: my first iPhone My Blackberry has just been switched…
Some years ago, I delivered a presentation as a keynote with the title: “All Bankers are Criminals”. I actually didn’t mean “all”. The chicken feed, battery farmed, commercial, transactional and retail bankers are pin-stripe suited, humble pie, nice guys. I was talking about the evil animals of Wall Street and the City. These jungle animals…
