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This is quite a long blog: TLDR? The headline is the that language is what creates the concentration of power and Britain has done a good job there, as has France in the past. The question is whether AI will destroy all of this? From Viking invaders and French aristocrats to American technology and artificial…

I recently delivered a keynote at Visa Next in Poland exploring the future of money, payments and banking. From the technological revolutions that created today’s financial system to the arrival of AI-native banking, the industry faces a fundamental question: are we using technology to make banking better for customers, or just cheaper for banks? Here’s…

I was thinking about trickledown economics and tax, as it seems to be debated in the news almost daily. The core debate is whether to tax the rich more or less and the answer depends upon whether you are right or left of centre. This is why every election falls into the same argument. One…

I have always thought insurance has a marketing problem. You buy something you hope you will never use, pay for something whose value may not become apparent for decades and, with life assurance, buy a product whose payout you will not even be around to enjoy. It is hardly surprising that insurers have spent more…

From Mt. Gox to Bybit and now Binance, cryptocurrency exchanges have lost billions to hackers. The technology works, so why do the institutions keep failing? If a bank lost $6.36 billion in minutes, there would be outrage, regulatory investigations, demands for resignations and questions about whether the institution should be allowed to continue operating. When…

The Bank of England has released its latest report on artificial intelligence in financial services. The numbers are impressive. The reality is less so. Banks are embracing AI at extraordinary speed, but are they transforming banking or just making yesterday’s banking cheaper? The Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority have just published their latest…

As Halloween approaches, I was reflecting on death and murder in banking. It is not a new thing for me, as it turns up quite often, but it hit me today with allegations that a former bank chairman arranged for his communications chief to be intimidated, in an operation that ended in his death. People…

When Google Goes Down, Your Bank Goes Down. Who Is Really in Control? We spent decades worrying about banks being too big to fail. Now we have a handful of technology companies that are too important to fail, and yesterday demonstrated why that should terrify us. I’ve recently been blogging and writing about the dangers…

I’ve been a little bit prolific in writing this year, what with two books in Pulp Finction and Intelligent Bank consistently in the top 10 on Amazon. Now, I have one more new book. It started with a question in my head: how come Pharaohs had so much power? It ended with the colonisation of Mars. The new book Who…

There is something wonderfully hypocritical happening in banking this week. American banks have started blocking AI bots from access to customer accounts: ‘You don’t want rogue agents’: Jamie Dimon bars outside AI agents like Meta’s Muse from JPMorgan accounts Citi becomes latest US bank to restrict AI agents from accessing accounts JPMorgan Chase, Citi and…