Opinion

I’ve been finding it increasingly frustrating on my travels, thanks to one of my credit card companies. My travelling depends on two credit cards: a bank issued corporate MasterCard and American Express. The reason I carry these two is that the MasterCard works across Europe, where quite a few countries …

I had an interesting discussion about hiring technology people into banks the other day. The challenge of finding top coders is a big one, as there’s an awful lot of other firms to join out there. You could join a hot FinTech unicorn like Monzo, SoFi, Stripe, Ant Financial, Ping …

I was having a breakfast meeting with a banking friend who had recently been through a tortuous experience. His start-up had been acquired by a major traditional bank, and it ended with blood on the floor. The start-up got squeezed into the Empire, and it literally was like something from …

So my snarky little friend Ron Shevlin wrote a piece on Forbes claiming that Americans don’t want a digital bank. As the guy who wrote the book Digital Bank you might think I would take offence to such a statement, but no. I agree with his content, just not his …

I feel sorry for Deutsche Bank. I’ve worked with the bank and they have some great people. It used to be that their investment banking services were one of the best in Europe, alongside UBS and Barclays Bank. That was before September 2008. Since then, it’s been like an old …

I write a lot about FinTech payments, lending, roboadvice and such like. But there’s been a strong bubbling trend underneath all this that has not gone unnoticed. I’ve just not blogged about it enough. SMALL BUSINESS FINANCE People talk a lot about finance for SMEs – small to medium enterprises …

Reading about FinTech unicorns and pizzas worth $80 million, you would think that the world was bubbling over with wealth. FinTech investments last year peaked at over $110 billion, more than double the year before, and IPOs for firms like Uber and WeWorks are seeing valuations in the stratosphere. Everything …

After my recent blogs about Earth Day, Banking for Humanity, the FinTech Parent-Child relationship and Gen Y and Z: Doing good for society and the planet (an Earth Day FinTech update) Doing bad for society and the planet (an Earth Day banking update) Banking for Humanity? FinTech and the Parent-Child …

I’m writing more and more about Facebook launching its own cryptocurrency lately: Will Facebook become the world’s central bank? (March 2019) Will a global platform connect all of our money? (April 2019) This is because they are getting serious about payments and blockchain, after a variety of reports that they …

I was asked to speak to the theme of Banking for Humanity at a conference the other day, and it made me realise that the five areas I’ve recently been blogging about came together nicely. First, there’s financial inclusion which is the theme of Digital Human. The fact that anyone …

Henry Ford famously stated: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Of course they would, as they had no idea what anything else was. In fact, I use this story often as a Victorian vision of the future was a steam-powered robot horse. …

I used to blog about blockchain and cryptocurrency almost every day. I stopped as it got too hyped, scammed and boring. In fact, my last blog was about the blockchain hype being dead, but the blockchain dream is still very much alive. Now, most people think that blockchain is something …

I recently gave a speech where the title was FinTech or TechFin?  Everyone had been given a copy of my book Digital Human, and the speech was transcribed. Here it is:   FinTech or TechFin?  Thank you for inviting me to join you here. It is a great honour. I’m a …

I blogged in March (Transforming the bank – three phases of change) about the method to make systems change happen to transform the bank. In another conversation, I then realised that there are three phases of organisational change to transform the bank. The first phase is a recognition that the …

As I travel non-stop, I have one trusty little zip-bag in my travel case. It’s a zip-bag full of cables and converters, mainly to keep my phone fully charged all the time. Plug converters for America, Europe, UK and Australia, and cable converters between Apple and non-Apple products. As I …