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I often find headlines around the world that banks are hated, and was reminded of this today when Australian website The Conversation had the headline: Why do people hate bankers? No, really…  The website cites research that bankers do not make excess profits and are not overpaid, but are hated due to being big and…

Someone asked me yesterday: what do you think will happen to the card schemes in the future? I hadn’t thought about it much lately, but suddenly realised that the card schemes face a real melting pot of change.  The last time I had talked about Visa and MasterCard in any depth was a while ago…

So Apple has just announced record Q4 profits, and we all go ooh and aah, but I went: what’s happening with Apple Pay? After calling Apple Pay a winner two months ago, several people claimed it would fail (although many have personal stakes for saying so). I called it because of the sheer size and power…

We were having a debate on twitter, me and a few of my fintech pals, when one of them posted a link to this blog.   The blog is on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) website and written by Rishad Tobaccowala (great name!), and provides a view of 5 insights and 3 predictions from Davos. The…

I was running a workshop for a bank the other day and asked the group: “what are the toxic assumptions in the bank that will stop it from succeeding to change?” The resultant list was fascinating and long and, to give you a flavour of what the group came up with, I’ve bucketed them into…

So the FinTech50 were announced last night. These are the 50 most innovative fintech start-ups, as voted for by a panel that included yours truly.   The process is quite rigorous with the organisers – Julie Lake and Nicky Cotter – bringing together over 700 global contenders for a range of specialist panels to review….

Sometimes social media kicks off great discussions about banking.  In fact, most of what I learn, collaborate, corroborate, develop, gain, understand and envisage comes primarily through my social network.  The latest dialogue that spawns its own blog entry is from the Facebook Group Next Bank (I’m speaking at Next Bank Europe btw on February 11th…

I just received some fascinating research into the state of the investment management industry from State Street Research.  The research was conducted over a period of 18 months through surveys of 3,744 investors, investment providers, government officials and regulators, across 19 countries. Here’s the summary: THE FOLKLORE OF FINANCE The models for success in the…

I regularly encounter discussions about corporates’ needs from banks that say: the corporate generally doesn’t give a buck about their banking. Apparently most corporates do not understand banking, do not care about getting the best services and rely far too much on their cosy sense of keeping the status quo. Actually, banks probably feel the…