My yesterday blog about COVOID idiocrasy annoyed a few people. I was accused of writing a common tabloid ranting column, railing against the government. Yea … … so? So? So … so, I wrote it with a point. How are they implementing these COVOID regulations? Who is checking on the people? You may say, but it’s…
Talking about HSBC often drags me into political controversy. For example, when I criticised the bank for not making a stand over the Hong Kong protests, I got a lot of pushback. Frankly, I don’t like to dip my feet into political waters unless forced to and, in the spirit of that thinking, I was prompted…
I’m starting to worry about FinTech as they seem to have fallen foul of regulatory compliance and, as a consequence, customer trust. The biggest challenge for a challenger is to keep customer trust AND regulatory compliance. This is what we are seeing having consequences today. The fact I’m starting to worry about FinTech, as an…
Building on yesterday’s blog where I mentioned Monzo’s issues of client onboarding, I mentioned that, for the past few months, I’ve noticed many tweets from Monzo customers about accounts being closed suddenly, with no explanation. Each time, I’ve shared the information and copied Monzo and asked them to explain. Hey Chris 👋 Thanks for expressing…
Britain has left the EU, but now I read headlines everywhere saying cross-border movements are impossible, Ireland is broken, the City was ignored, our fisherman cannot sell shellfish and so on and so forth. A disaster? Possibly but, on the other hand, everything that is wrong with the EU was illustrated by the Covid vaccine….
I’m very aware that central banks are investigating the use of digital currencies, particularly as they can now see bitcoin gaining more and more traction (Tesla, Square and more committed – next is Apple?), but had not realised how extensive are those investigations. According to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) latest paper, 86% of the…
It’s interesting that the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, came out with its review of the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) economy, and the media started comparing Klarna with Wonga. I’ve blogged in-depth about both in the past: Whatever you think, Wonga is doing well, July 2013 The Finanser Interviews: Niklas Adalberth, Co-Founder, Deputy…
The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) just released a paper on how governments and central banks should deal with FinTech upstarts. Here are the conclusions: Helping to achieve a level playing field in the provision of financial services is a desired outcome of the regulatory framework. This entails facilitating an orderly entry of new participants…
Someone asked me to elaborate on the links between banks, government, the economy and society, and this was well illustrated by the video I shared the other day of James Pierpont Morgan, who founded the JPMorgan empire (see end of this blog entry). That all began with learning the banking ropes in Europe; then enabling…
