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Shaping the future of finance

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The Rise of Islamic Finance

Ron Robins,  an Englishman now based in Canada who promotes the idea of ethical investing, shared another item with me this week which has some interest here. The Rise of Islamic FinanceBy Ron Robins, Founder & Analyst – Investing for the Soul Islamic finance is spreading around the world. Governments realising its potential for profits…

Googling for money

My good mate Brett King has just posted some really interesting analysis and stats from Google about how we find out about loans and finances, and the search behaviours therein. The headline data came from Google Australia, with the key trends showing a move away from branch towards search for financial news.  For example, when…

US Government and Financial Elites Deceive Us

I received an email from Ron Robins the other day, wondering whether I would share some information with the Financial Services Club community.  Ron is an Englishman, now based in Canada, who promotes the idea of ethical investing and seems to have a slight concern over US behaviour.  This posting was originally published on the…

Forget Frankfurt, I’m moving to Basildon

Since I first met the Deutsche Börse guys, I’ve found it challenging to work out where they are. Y’see, last year I went to Börsenstraße in Frankfurt, as you would assume that the Borse would be in the street named after it. Well, it used to be … … but not anymore. Now the Deutsche…

Old Borse1

When will we know there won’t be another meltdown?

As mentioned the other day, I will be at this year’s SWIFT Show SIBOS focused upon a dialogue around the Long Now. The aim is to find some big super-crunchy questions about the long view of banking and finance, and try to answer them. What sort of questions are we thinking about? Here are a…

Summertime blues: give your firm agility

OK, you’re all back from work and feeling the post-summertime holiday blues … what can I say? Not a lot. So, as it’s Tuesday and you’re probably pulling your hair out already. Breathe. Calm down. Now think about your company. Most of you probably work for a large business. An elephant of a company. So…

Tomorrow, at six minutes past five

Set your alarms. Get up early. Celebrate a once in a century moment. Yes, tomorrow at six minutes past five or, to be more exact, at seven seconds past six minutes past five it will be: 05:06:07 on 8th September. Or, in other words: 05:06:07 08/09/10 [Sorry Americans, your day happened a month ago on…

Visa: processing global payments in under a second

I’ve used a video from Visa Europe to illustrate what real-time payments processing means in practice for a while now, and finally tracked it down on Brightcove: It’s a good video, tracking the journey of a payment from a Swedish bank customer using a mobile contactless phone in China. The payment travels through 32,000 of…

Bunfight at the Wall Street Corral

America has a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), thanks to the Dodd-Frank reforms. The CFPB is a bit like the FBI, but focused upon money. Who could possibly run the CFPB? They would need to be an Eliot Ness Untouchable sort of person. A big swinging heavyweight, who can shoot the baddies of the…

Making the anti-social banker social

I was intrigued to see Chris Anderson’s discussion of the Web is Dead in last month’s Wired Magazine, for no other reason than how it resonates with my own thoughts on this area back in May. In May, I received a very lukewarm reaction in Asia to the idea that everything in the future will…

Increase with age