Opinion

What is work-life balance these days?  I accidentally on purpose started an interesting debate on LinkedIn. It began because someone posted on LinkedIn how proud they were of celebrating their sixteenth wedding anniversary, with photos of their wedding from 1995, and tagging a load of people.   I found it annoying. I …

Yesterday I asked Is there Life on Mars as a tribute to my hero David Bowie. I originally titled that blog entry: Is there Life on Mars? No but there will be a bank there soon … as that blog made me realise that we are rapidly moving to being …

Twenty years ago, I remember being impressed when the late, great David Bowie launched a bank. Admittedly it was backed by USA Bankshares, a proper bank, but the idea of celebrity-branded banks was expected to become a thing. Funnily enough, it hasn’t (unless you count Will.i.am and Atom) yet, nevertheless, …

I spotted two updates recently. The first is the half a billion dollar mistake at Citigroup. The second is how Amazon created Amazon Web Services (AWS). The two pieces go hand-in-hand. First, how could Citigroup make a billion dollar mistake? User Interface. The mistake was made by a worker in …

I recently joined The Digital Growth podcast …   powered by Sounder … and they kindly transcribed the conversation, so I thought I would share it here. Chris Skinner: Traditional banks tend to push products through channels to get greater share of wallet and cross sell. Whereas, digital banks start …

I see so many articles with titles like: What will banks do when Amazon becomes a bank? Google to take on banks Big Tech versus Big Banks … and so on and so forth. If you haven’t noticed, I keep on saying that Amazon, Google and Big Tech will NOT …

How much money is wasted by banks on digital? I wonder whether, one day, anyone will work out how much money has been wasted by banks on digital technologies. Various reports reckon that banks spend anything from half a trillion dollars a year on tech to over a trillion. Two …

I just got a report from PwC and my heart sank. The headline is: Financial institutions to significantly increase use of gig economy workers to upskill workforce PwC report suggests up to a fifth of future workforces in financial services could be gig employees The detail is: Importing the digital …

I haven’t commented much on bitcoin’s (BTC) recent surge, as I’ve been watching and waiting, but it is something. Just in case you didn’t notice, the value has moved from a low of under $5,000 per BTC in March 2020 to around $50,000 per BTC today. But it’s not just …

I was on a call the other day, discussing Big Data and Green Finance. It’s not an area I talk about much, although Green is more and more on the radar. Even big bank CEO’s are aware of it and the issues that go with it. So, what’s new? Well, …

I was pretty surprised to find that many of Robinhood’s account holders are very young, with an average age of 31. It is probably why they pile into anti-Wall Street stock movements and they are not the only ones. See this from Reuters: Apex Clearing, which helps facilitate trades for …

I’m working on a new book project. You might have spotted the themes in my recent blog entries but, if not, it’s all about purpose. The tagline is: if you don’t stand for something, you fall down, and is focused upon stakeholder capitalism. ESG, CSR and all that stuff and more. So, I’ve been watching …

It strikes to my digital nerve when I see forms that ask for a FAX number. What’s a FAX? Or someone said the other day that I should Xerox that. What’s Xerox? Watching a movie. Investigator is checking paperwork at a hotel and the guy says: “Hey man, are you …

This is my last blog of 2020, so I thought I would look back at the year with a personal view. A terrible year. A year of locked down loneliness for many. In my case, it’s been hard. I am used to being in a different country every other day, …

I woke up yesterday to find this story on Sifted, the Financial Times newish platform dedicated to innovation and FinTech: Fintechs to cosy up with politicians to counter ‘big bank lobby’ It’s interesting, especially for a guy like me who has hovered around all of the lobbies mentioned. The gist …