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Money creates purpose (which is why it’s so important)

I’m going to write the last of my blogs at this point on being purpose-driven to reference something that irks me a lot. Exclusivity. We have exclusivity a lot in life. The idea is that it creates ambition, hope, focus, hunger, direction and reward. We want the next airmile to get silver status and then…

Greed is good … and my bonus is better

I was a bit agog and aghast at the recent announcement from 192 US CEOs, who said that stakeholders are now more important than shareholders. This focus upon stakeholders has been an emerging trend for over the past quarter century and here’s what these great US leaders said: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation…

Greed is good … or is it?

There’s a comment that has stayed with me for a long time. It goes along the lines of if you’re earning $10 million a year then spending $10,000 is only the same as someone who earns $100,000 a year spending $100. It’s just relative. This often strikes me as I travel around different luxury locations….

Where the AI rubber hits the banking road

I was talking with a senior banker, who told me that he was in charge of the Artificial Intelligence program in the bank. I was impressed as he is part of the executive leadership team of the bank and not the CIO. We have invested widely across the board in AI, he told me, and…

Money without government? Emperors without Clothes?

I finally hit the nail on the head about why you can’t have money without government. It’s because you can create as open a system, complex a platform, distributed an idea, decentralised a currency as you want but, unlike most industries, without some form of supervisory oversight the whole system collapses. So, when we talk…

America: a nation living in the 20th Century

When did you last write a check (cheque)? When did you last receive one? Although a valid payment mechanism in some countries, it has been phased out in many. Finland stopped using checks in 1993 and Poland in 2006. The Netherlands have taken it a step further. Having banned domestic checks back in 2002, the…

Are humans really needed for banking?

I enjoy being around bankers who have been immersed in the industry nearly all of their lives and hearing their war stories. I heard two stories recently from a retiring banker, and thought it worth sharing to show just how far we’ve come. This friend started life in international banking in the wilds of the…

AI is not a technology change but a cultural one

I just picked up a Financial Times article talking about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change the way you deal with money. It’s actually more about the Chinese internet giant Ping An, and how they’re changing finance using AI. If you are a customer of Chinese financial services group Ping An, you can use a new…

Three Commerzbanks are worth less than One Stripe

The big news yesterday is that Klarna is now Europe’s largest FinTech unicorn, valued at $5.5 billion, and the sixth largest FinTech unicorn worldwide (discounting Ant Financial, Ping An and co). According to CB Insights, Stripe is the largest FinTech unicorn (USA, $22.5 billion), followed by One97 Communications (PayTM India, $10 billion); Nubank (Brazil, $10…

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