It is amazing that the UK has a tiny market for Credit Unions when other markets, particularly the USA, is domianted by them. Why is this? And why are we trying to create more banks when Credit Unions offer a great alternative that is already on our doorstep today? In a guest piece mainlywritten by…
As mentioned, I’m now becoming a collector of weird and wacky bank notes, as well as those that are hugely historical or politically interesting. This is particularly worthwhile as cash is disappearing fast so these notes won't be around for long (I jest, of course). Actually, bank notes are interesting, as blogged about yesterday with…
During my trip to Africa, we had a few days out at the magnificent Victoria Falls. An amazing natural wonder of the world, particularly from the Zimbabwean side of the falls where you can walk the 1.8 kilometres opposite the massively flowing waters. I mention this because I’ve known about Zimbabwe’s currency explosion for a…
Just recovering from a two week stint abroad – more on this later this week – and back to blogging as usual. However, as my brain has been completely switched off from banking and stuff (well, almost), I'm going to share a couple of interesting infographics I received whilst away. Today's is on Google and…
I hosted a dinner this week, where a group of senior bank executives involved in cleaning up the PPI mess gathered to debate and discuss what had been learnt from the experience. For those overseas readers who are unfamiliar with the situation, the UK banking industry has been caught out with a massive consumer mis-selling…
I generally meet two types of bankers. The first is a technology sceptic. Their thinking goes something like: There are many fads and fashions in banking and technology. A few years ago, everyone talked about cloud. Then they’re all talking about mobile and apps. Now they’re yaddering on about Big Data and stuff. Of course,…
It’s interesting looking at the attitude of various generations towards money. The War Generation was raised to be in debt to no-one for nothing. Don’t take credit and, if you do have to borrow, pay it off as fast as possible. The Boomer Generation was raised to borrow as much as possible from everyone. The…
Chairing a conference all day, I was asked to give a summary at the end of the day, and was intrigued to find that all of my notes talked about human relationships through digital channels. Here’s a short summary to share with y’all. In the opening presentation, we heard that banks need to continue to…
