Opinion

I wasn’t going to post this blog but the more it sits in my head, the more I felt I had to write it. Like everyone I expect, I was really shocked by the Genoa Morandi bridge collapse that killed 43 people this month. The idea of driving happily along …

I got into an argument after a presentation where I said that active fund management is dead. It wasn’t the best thing to say in front of a group of active fund managers, but I can’t help myself. It’s my background in dealing with program trading in the 1990s; then …

I was having a debate about innovation with a friend. They said that most of what banks were calling innovation is actually business optimisation or, as I call it, incremental improvements. Incremental improvements are doing existing processes cheaper and faster, more effectively and more efficiently, with change. Easy areas to …

It shows the nature of money and finance in our lives, in the way that the media reports about it. Quite often you get a scary headline like the big banks are watching you or banks will sell your data and it makes us mad. Replace bank with internet giants, …

I’ve been thinking for a while now about building a new financial system from the ground up using AI, blockchain, the Internet of Everything and other technologies. What would it look like? What would we build? I guess the piece that inspired a lot of my thinking came from two …

For all the negative views of technology, the positive is that it is enabling and inclusive. This is what Digital Human explores in depth. The main critique of my book is that it is too optimistic about the future of technology, and should be more balanced. Nevertheless, after yesterday’s post …

I was listening to Andrew Keen, digital sceptic, giving a keynote at a conference. He was lambasting the way in which the internet had developed, and the fact that it had gifted power to a small, select few companies, who own the world. Apple, with its trillion-dollar valuation, could buy …

I spotted a chart the other day showing the millions of dollars lost on cryptocurrency platforms … Source: The Wall Street Journal Since 2011, there have been 56 cyberattacks directed at cryptocurrency exchanges, initial coin offerings and other digital-currency platforms around the world, according to Autonomous Research, bringing the total …

I cannot post a 222-page PDF from the US Government on FinTech and competition without also posting a 136-page PDF from the European Parliament on FinTech and competition. Also released last week, this is a report prepared by the policy department of the European Parliament at the request of the ECON Committee. …

After my recent blog about challenger banks, I received an interesting email from David Parker challenging the idea that a start-up is actually a challenger. Chris I continually argue that Revolut is not a challenger bank – it does not today have a banking licence. If you want to say any prepaid …

BACS released UK account switching statistics this week, and it makes for interesting reading. The big winners in the first quarter of 2018 are Halifax, Nationwide and HSBC. The big losers are Co-operative Bank, Lloyds and Barclays. Why? Well, Halifax offers a great incentive to switch: £75 … nothing like …

I regularly come back to the topic of bank branches, which are topical. A recent UK headline said that a town is now branchless … Closure of Lloyds leaves this Warwickshire town with no banks … whilst another says that the closing of branches is all about increasing profits for …

Ever since the collapse of Enron, we’ve seen auditors under question. I’m sure most of you can remember the Enron disaster but, just in case, the company went from Energy King to Futures Basketcase faster than Lewis Hamilton could catch up with Sebastian Vettel yesterday. Much blame was placed on their …

I see a strong need for global regulatory co-ordination. In particular, in a globalised world with a global network where everyone can connect and transact in real-time, anytime, anywhere, the idea of national regulators regulating a system that does not recognise national borders seems counter-intuitive. This was illustrated well by …

A common response to technology is to test it. The problem with testing technology is that it is just a test. A false implementation. It is not designed for reality and can lead to false results. For example, I remember one UK bank testing new technologies in one branch, to …