Technology

I’ve recently noted a number of reports about Open Banking, with many published recently due to its imminent arrival on January 13, 2018. Source: IBM As can be seen, we have several different groups working on Open Banking. There’s the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) with Open APIs for payments, Open Banking regulations which are…

I was at a recent cybersecurity conference where the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) was talking about the threats we face today from the dark web. After Silk Road, much of its illegal business switched to Alpha Bay. The authorities took out Alpha Bay and Hansa business increased almost eight-fold overnight. The authorities…

Innovate Finance has been working with the Department of International Trade (DIT) on a report on blockchain and the future of financial services. The report was developed with the help of the Economist Intelligence Unit and is now available here. The Executive Summary is as follows: From Concept to Reality: How Blockchain will Reshape the Financial…

I was listening to someone talking about monolith versus microservices structures recently, and they likened it to an old car versus a new one. Old cars were made of metal and welded together into a solid machine where, if any part breaks, you have to replace the whole machine. The machine is unwieldy, slow and…

I’ve been saying for so long now that banks need to replace core legacy systems that I’m boring myself, but here I go again. The reason I’m talking about it again is that, even though some disagree and think they can fudge the issue with plug-ins, I believe that the new competition will decimate banks…

As Sweden was the first European country to use cash for payments back in 1661, it’s unsurprising that it’s the first European country that wants to be cashless. This is why, for several years, I’ve been watching the regular speeches by Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of the Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, talking about eradicating…

It is the nature of finance that, at its core, is risk. Insurance is all about covering yourself for the risk of uncertainty. You don’t know if your house will be robbed but, just in case it is, you insure it. You don’t know if you’ll have a car accident but, just in case, you…

It’s intriguing to see how people react to my presentations. I am direct, some call me blunt, but my content is based upon deep research that mixes desk-based analysis, my blog, endless conversations around the world with bankers and technologists and a lot of experience. I’m not saying others are wrong, but I know I’m…

I’ve blogged on some of the themes I’m going to cover below, but the story gets clearer and clearer in my head the more I blog about and talk about it, so this version may be a little clearer than some that have gone before. The first is that banks organisational structures have to move…

I find it interesting as we move towards Open Banking and Open APIs through regulations at both the UK and EU levels. The push is for data sharing with trusted third parties with user consent. All well and good, you would think, but several surveys point to it not being quite so rosy. The typical…