Technology

Mar 20, 2014

BBVA’s amazing API challenge

I missed this competition at the end of last year but luckily caught BBVA presenting at the American Banker Retail Bank 2014 conference and was blown away. BBVA gave away their data. Yes, they created an API and gave it away for free. Open source bank transaction data and then see what you can do…

Mar 14, 2014

Digital wallets will process all the money on earth by 2025

Another presentation that surprised me in Oslo came from Tor Jacobsen, CEO of TSM Nordic. It surprised me as I had no idea about TSM, a mobile wallet provider owned by Telenor and DNB – Norway’s biggest mobile network operator (MNO) and biggest bank – and will launch in the Norwegian market later this year…

Feb 10, 2014

It’s a wonderful digital life … if you’re a digital disruptor

I recently had an epiphany. It was not painful, but it was enlightening. The realisation occurred to me as I looked at this chart from Zopa: It’s an interesting chart, especially the hockey stick rise in funds transferred as the financial crisis hit, and relates to a recent headline in the Financial Times: “P2P group…

Feb 10, 2014

It’s a wonderful digital life … if you’re a digital disruptor

Jan 31, 2014

Data is at the heart of everything today, especially cyberattacks

Another dimension of discussion at the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery conference was the whole area of hacktivism and cyberattacks. We all know that the cybercriminals are organising cybergangs of cyberteenagers to cyberattack the cyberbanks (ed: isn’t that too many cybers for a Friday morning?). This was illustrated well by the figures I gave yesterday…

Jan 30, 2014

Banks’ legacy liability is resolved by the cloud

So I just finished presenting at a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery conference. Not my strongest subject although, after years of battering my liver with alcohol, I am pretty adept at Disaster Recovery. Anyways, not knowing much about the subject, I just called the presentation Life’s a Glitch, as there appear to be so many…

Jan 30, 2014

Banks’ legacy liability is resolved by the cloud

Jan 13, 2014

2014’s priorities for investment banks: neural latency intellisense

Investment banking as a sector looks to have a much more positive outlook this year than in previous years. The year will see the implementation of a lot of the regulatory changes formulated since the crisis hit, and a marketplace that is starting to settle into the new normal, whatever that is. From a general…

Jan 8, 2014

Visions of the Future

As we enjoy the headlines coming out of CES in San Francisco: Android device sales 'to top one billion' in 2014 Google Glass-controlled treadmill debuts at CES 2014 Samsung unveils new Galaxy NotePro and TabPro tablets Samsung shows off its Bendable TV Michael Bay walks out of CES after fluffing Samsung TV presentation LG shows off first…

Jan 7, 2014

The outlook for banking in 2014

Just before Christmas, I held discussions with many retail, commercial and investment bankers in London about their thoughts for the New Year. Here are the headlines: Economy In the UK, 2014 is the year of the next general election which must be called on or before May 2015, and that factor will be a key…