Chris Skinner's blog

Shaping the future of finance

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“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter regulation”

We were discussing rules and regulations recently, and how the rulebook screws up all meaning and intention of the things they are trying to enforce. It’s not the regulators fault, but the fault of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Take the examples we debated. The US constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest and…

Visa note the easiest fraud is to buy a Rolex

We had a very enjoyable and engaging dialogue with Peter Bayley, Executive Director of Fraud Management for Visa Europe at the Financial Services Club London last night. Peter spoke for over an hour in an interactive discussion about the role of Visa in managing fraud, who is accountable for losses, the impact of current and…

Visa note the easiest fraud is to buy a Rolex

We had a very enjoyable and engaging dialogue with Peter Bayley, Executive Director of Fraud Management for Visa Europe at the Financial Services Club London last night. Peter spoke for over an hour in an interactive discussion about the role of Visa in managing fraud, who is accountable for losses, the impact of current and…

It’s the customers fault if they get bad service

I hosted a meeting of a bank recently, where I just asked people to tell me what they felt were the biggest challenges for the bank in the future. We went round the table and, unsurprisingly, the discussion covered four key topics: regulations, technology, customers and changing the internal culture.  Surprisingly, the one thing that…

It’s the customers fault if they get bad service

I hosted a meeting of a bank recently, where I just asked people to tell me what they felt were the biggest challenges for the bank in the future. We went round the table and, unsurprisingly, the discussion covered four key topics: regulations, technology, customers and changing the internal culture.  Surprisingly, the one thing that…

Transparency, transparency, transparency

Lots of talk this week about transparency in banking, and how banks are too opaque and secretive in their approach to customers and charges. Certainly that’s been the case in the past, and certainly it’s still the case in some areas of banking today. For example, we’ve just had our major UK banks pooling money…

Why banks get stuck with legacy everything

I had a fascinating chat about bank issues with their legacy systems yesterday, and concluded that the legacy issues are the bank’s fault. There are two issues: one is related to banks believing that they are stuck with overheads that they want to eradicate, but customers won’t let them go; the other is banks being…

RBS: yet another British Jekyll and Hyde Bank

There was a whole load of stuff going on in the banking world last week about Q3 bank results and, in particular, whether the Royal Bank of Scotland should split into a good bank and bad bank. Like Northern Rock – or should that be Jekyll and Hyde? – the idea is to  take the…

Jekyllhyde

Why cash will survive …

So I’m moving house – have I mentioned that before? – and have house cleaning, clearing and removal services all hovering around doing work this week. Interestingly, all of them demanded cash. I offered cheques. Not interested. PayPal? No way. Bitcoin? Never ‘eard of it mate. What’s going on? Well of ocuerse, it’s the old…

Future of Money: the TV Series

A good friend of the Financial Services Club has launched a kickstarter project for her Future of Money TV Series.   Heather Vescent is one of a small group of visionary people involve in finance, and I've just joined her as a backer of the project.  However, with only 70 hours to go, will she…

Future of money