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Regulation

From start-up to incumbent: the innovation cycle (Part Two)

During the third phase of the innovation cycle discussed on Friday, the upstart has been noticed by the incumbents and becomes a target to be attacked.  We saw this with Uber from the taxi firms; with Airbnb, it’s the unlicensed sub-letting of properties that hits the news; and with Facebook, the target was privacy breaches….

Upstart

Another example of why banking is not the same as music

I attended a great meeting in Austria with Google yesterday.  There were a number of Google Vision presentations and discussions, along with nice vignettes from Accenture and Raiffeisen Bank.  One slide particularly caught my attention however, as I’ve just started to see a cycle in Fintech and this slide from Google’s Creative Evangelist (really?) Jeremy…

Digital Cycle

The Challenging State of British Banking

We started the new season of the Financial Services Club last night with meetings in both London and Edinburgh.  The Financial Services Club runs from autumn to summer, and this is our 12th year of operation after starting our first meetings in London in 2004.  Now in 8 countries and possibly more to come, the…

Anthony Browne

Banks make a corporates’ first experience, the worst experience

We had an interesting dinner this week talking about customer onboarding.  The focus was on counterparty banks and corporate account opening processes, and the ongoing challenges therein.  In a nutshell, due to the documentary and regulatory requirements for proof of identity and trust, the account opening process is the worst part of banking and can…

Toilets

Is a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) inevitable?

So last week I was honoured to present at a conference in Washington just before Senator Elizabeth Warren, the leading voice in America for changing the bank system. Senator Warren made a strong-worded speech condemning big bank mentality.  A few choice comments included a condemnation of Jamie Dimon, who apparently was personally calling congressmen to…

Elizabeth Warren

The implications of PSD2 and third party access to accounts (research)

I just found some interesting research about how banks in Europe are reacting to the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), and what other banks worldwide think about it. PSD2 is a work-in-progress European regulation that will impact financial institutions already operating within the scope of the first Payment Services Directive of 2009.  PSD2 extends the…

Banks could change, but the regulator won’t allow it

I mentioned yesterday that a bank CEO asked me the three things I would do if I were him.  My response was: create the dream, live the dream, deliver the dream.  A bit cheesy, but you need to read the context if you want to know more about the background to this. He responded by…

Why it’s so difficult to compete with incumbent banks

I presented at a great conference last week on how ot start a bank.  The conference featured some fine discussions of the challenges and opportunities of opening a new bank in Britain, and included a presentation from Victoria Raffé. Victoria was, until recently, the go to person fornprocessing bank licence applications with the Financial Conduct…

Licence

My favourite banking screw up stories

There are so many examples of banks messing up customer accounts around the world that it would be tough to know where to start … except that as I live in Britain, that’s pretty good place to begin. There media here love to regularly report banks messing up, and so here are some of my…

Are banks getting a rough deal from regulators (just look at Third Party Account Access)

I seem to be relentlessly blogging about fintech, cryptocurrencies and disruption these days.  I guess because these are the things that are being discussed the most at the conferences I attend.  So it’s easy to forget that there are key regulatory changes coming into play, and the consequences of these, probably because these things are…

Holvi

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