Opinion

It’s intriguing to find more and more banks creating digital heads.  I meet them regularly, I’m the digital head of retail banking; I’m the digital head of retail business banking; I’m the digital head of the investment bank; I’m the digital head of our transaction banking business; I’m the digital head of our commercial bank;…

I’ve spent decades preaching transformation and the easiest way to shut me up is ask: Where’s the business case? This is the question normally asked by the mealy-mouthed cynical financial controlling banker in the audience … They want the spreadsheet showing the cost-benefit analysis and return on investment figures.  The problem is that, as anyone…

I’ve been talking the internet of things for a while as, after all, The ValueWeb is the internet of value that underpins the internet of things. A key concept of the internet of value is how it supports your television, car, fridge, shoes, phone, computer and your partners’ and chidlrens’ things to buy and transact. …

Following on from yesterday’s blog about Little Britain and a hard Brexit, we all know the world has been globalising and, even though there is currently a backlash against globalisation per se, it is unstoppable.  It is unstoppable primarily because of technology.  The whole planet is now on the network.  Seven billion people have access…

I was thinking about not sharing this info but hey, as you are good enough to read my blog … here’s the bottom-line on digital disruption (ed: oh no, Chris said the D-word!). There’s a slide that’s been doing the circuit for a while.  It comes from Visual Capitalist, and charts the change in the world’s…

Talking about moving from proprietary to open, from controlled to marketplace and from internal to external focus, another key change is the very nature of technology itself.  It’s quite clear that a start-up today could launch with just a few thousand dollars, Amazon Web Services and a bright idea.  There is no need to build…

Building on yesterday’s InsurTech theme, I remember being taught the principles of insurance some years ago.  A key difference between insurance and any other business is that it is seller beware rather than buyer beware.  This is why the industry is built with a principle called uberrima fides rather than caveat emptor.   Uberrima fides is…

Many of the people I meet believe that bitcoin is bad and will fail.  It’s rare to meet anyone who says that it could change the world and will succeed.  But I’ve found one and he happens to have written a very good blog about it: Akin Fernandez, Entrepreneur Developer of Azteco. It’s a long read,…

I was having a nice relaxing Sunday, when alerted to a tweetfest taking place between industry heavyweights Simon Taylor (an ex-banker) and Mariano Belinky (a banker).  It all started with: Fintech didn’t disrupt banks but banks are slowly dying. Creating an ever growing opportunity for #fintech — Simon Taylor (@sytaylor) September 18, 2016 @sytaylor low…

I got into a conference this week (for a change) where the presenter of a roboadvising wealth manager got into a bit of a Q&A scuffle with an audience member.  Felix Niederer, founder and CEO of Zurich-based start-up True Wealth showed the stats for their customers. Most of them are over 30, and the real…