Regulation

I’ve had a few meetings with folks at the White House over the past eighteen months, which has been an honour and not something I felt I should blog about.  The National Economic Council woke up to the FinTech world early last year and have been consulting with many in …

I received a very thoughtful response to last week’s blog (about Dodd-Frank being the issue with the USA seeing zero neobanks starting up) from two Nahum Goldmann and David Gerbino.   Nahum and I have corresponded for some time about banking matters and his email sparked various views in my mind.  Here’s his …

Whilst almost 500 banks failed in the USA between 2008 and 2012, only three new banks opened. Only three new banks have opened in the United States since 2010.  Before the financial crisis, over 100 banks set up shop each year, on average, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance …

So I just attended a really interesting two day meeting that covered all things blockchain, regulations, innovation and more. I’ll blog about the bits I can in the next few days, and thought I’d start with an overview of the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Regulatory Sandbox and Project Innovate. The …

I’ve been presenting a summary of Digital Bank and ValueWeb for a few months now.  It is the story of the origins of moneykind and, as many have now heard the story, I thought it’s about time to share this on the blog. If you have half an hour free, then you can watch …

I just received a white paper about Social KYC from Fintech startup Veridu.  The idea is to use our social media profiles to authenticate and onboard as a new 21st century KYC process.  It’s an interesting idea I thought I’d share here but, before I do, I posted a note …

I had a lovely conversation with a group of investment bankers last night about technology transformation in capital markets. During the opening, a consistent theme cropped up: standards, interoperability, collaboration and cooperation … or lack of it. It is interesting that, in the buy and sell side world, few standards …

So we had our annual update on all things EU yesterday from David Doyle, loyal friend of the Financial Services Club and our opening keynote in most years as we are all keen to know what the Eurocrats are thinking.  In prepping for the meeting, I got to thinking about …

Another key development of 2015 has been the open sourcing of bank services.  I’ve talked for a while now about Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) – first blog entry almost seven years ago – and this forecast that anyone in the near future would be able to build their own bank through apps, APIs …

Things we’re reading today include … Banking’s ‘Uber moment’ is already happening — 100,000 bankers lost their jobs in 2015 Transcript: FT City Network on cyber crime Ex-Wall St stars swap banking for fintech The computer virus that blackmails you Why do many Americans mistrust the Federal Reserve? Blockchain believers …

I presented to the Financial Services Club meeting in Scotland last night and was asked an intriguing question at the end about anonymity.  What are the issues around protection of privacy and, by contrast, the requirements to protect anonymity?  If I am buying pornography, drugs or weapons online, am I …

In that same dialogue about when banks should act to block, buy or beat new competition, I realised that the new competition is doing something quite clever.  Unsurprisingly, Fintech firms look at banking and realise that it’s pretty dull and onerous stuff.  AML, KYC, compliance, audit, regulatory reporting, rules and …

I love the idea of money without government but, having sat through a regulatory discussion of correspondent banking, I think this hope is possibly false placed.  However, for my banking fraternity, I think they’ll be very interested in two reports recently produced on correspondent banking by the Committee on Payments …

The PSD2 is here.  For those who don't know what that is, it's the European update to the Payment Services Directive (PSD) of December 2007.  The original PSD aimed to harmonise the European payments markets and make the Eurozone behave as a Single Market.  It achieved some of those objectives, …

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, …