Welcome to The Finanser by Chris Skinner. The Finanser discusses all things FinTech, finance, banking, technology and, most importantly, the future. To make an enquiry about having Chris write or speak for you, here’s an illustration of his presentations … … Chris Skinner has regularly forecast the changes in finance driven by technology. He is…
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Lots of discussions these days are about AI. AI this, AI that, AI movie, AI influencers, even AI pop. (the K-pop group Mave do not exist – they are generated by AI) Every day, these developments shock and intrigue me. But what does this mean for banking and finance? Well, I guess there are some…
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As a general rule, I try to avoid being too personal in blogging. Sure, this is an opinion-based platform, but it’s boring talking about me, isn’t it? But then, last week, it proved to be a pretty amazing and exceptional week, so I’m just going to park this here. The week began with a trip…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … Generative finance, or GeFi for short We’ve had DeFi, CeFi, ReFi and more, but now it’s time for GeFi. If those phrases confuse you, we have Decentralised Finance versus Centralised Finance; we have Regenerative Finance, and now we have Generative Finance, or GeFi for short. What is GeFi?…
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We’ve had DeFi, CeFi, ReFi and more, but now it’s time for GeFi. If those phrases confuse you, we have Decentralised Finance versus Centralised Finance; we have Regenerative Finance, and now we have Generative Finance, or GeFi for short. What is GeFi? It’s the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into finance. This all started with…
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Things we’re reading today include … A bank whose boringness appeals to the world’s best fund managers (telegraph.co.uk) Citi Sells China Consumer Business To HSBC As British Bank Doubles Down On Asia (forbes.com) Bank of Israel to sell $30 billion to stop shekel collapse during Gaza war | The Times of Israel 1970s-style stagflation may…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Metro Bank strikes deal to shore up balance sheet – BBC News Santander UK drafts in Osborne to advise on Metro Bank offer | Sky News What is happening at Metro Bank and why is it in need of so much money? | The Guardian JPMorgan’s newest MD just…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Generative finance, or GeFi for short We’ve had DeFi, CeFi, ReFi and more, but now it’s time for GeFi. If those phrases confuse you, we have Decentralised Finance versus Centralised Finance; we have Regenerative Finance, and now we have Generative Finance, or GeFi for short. What is GeFi?…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Six high-street banks given ‘red’ warning over eco policies, Which? reveals | The Independent Metro Bank shares plunge on fund raising reports – BBC News Silicon Valley Bank Test Comes To Tokyo, And It’s About Time (forbes.com) How Ghana’s central bank lost $5bn in one year – BBC News…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include: Metro Bank plots capital-raise in bid to allay City concerns | Business News | Sky News Short sellers jump on Metro Bank after BoE rejection | Trustnet Indian fintech unicorn Slice secures rare approval to merge with bank | TechCrunch Swedish fintech Brite Payments secures $60M for instant bank payments…
Read MoreThings we’re reading today include … Sam Bankman-Fried: Trial of ‘Crypto King’ begins – BBC News Banks behind 70% jump in greenwashing incidents in 2023 -report | Reuters Ripple Lands on 2023 Fintech 100 List (u.today) London beats San Francisco on fintech as chiefs rally behind reform (cityam.com) Revolut strikes share deal with SoftBank to…
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Lots of discussions these days are about AI. AI this, AI that, AI movie, AI influencers, even AI pop. (the K-pop group Mave do not exist – they are generated by AI) Every day, these developments shock and intrigue me. But what does this mean for banking and finance? Well, I guess there are some…
Read More
We’ve had DeFi, CeFi, ReFi and more, but now it’s time for GeFi. If those phrases confuse you, we have Decentralised Finance versus Centralised Finance; we have Regenerative Finance, and now we have Generative Finance, or GeFi for short. What is GeFi? It’s the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into finance. This all started with…
Read More
I blogged about tokenizing everything the other day and my friend Efi made an interesting post the other day, related to this, about a report from the Boston Consulting Group. The report focuses upon India, which claims to be the third largest FinTech economy behind America and Britain, and specifically calls out a few key…
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When I was a lad – a good start for any commentary – we didn’t know nothing about money. I got pocket money from my dad but, if I begged hard enough and long enough, my dad would relent and buy me that Batman Corgi car I had been lusting after. At school, they taught…
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It’s interesting how trends rise. Over the past few years, I’ve been writing a lot about the impact of ESG and AI on banking, so it intrigued me to see a new survey of over 300 bankers about what’s new in banking. Key findings of the report include: Emerging innovations such as AI are cited as…
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I was asking the other day whether it is better or worse that my children play video games rather than watch movies, and the reaction was: time moves on. It surely does. The gaming industry is now bigger than Hollywood and music combined, so what do I know? According to a report by SuperData Research,…
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A few people got excited about the news this week that Mercedes-Benz had launched in-car fingerprint payments in partnership with Mastercard. I didn’t. In fact, it still amazes me how little we have developed since my days at NCR, then owned by AT&T. This was the 1990s and AT&T had this fantastic set of adverts…
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I was intrigued by a new report from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) which states that: “if the use of fintech grows rapidly outside of the regulated sector, it can generate risks to market conduct and integrity”. Shock, horror! And so? “New fintech developments might quickly become systemic due to network effects (for example, when…
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It made me laugh. Someone posed the question: what is the hiring process for fintech? After a short thought, my reply was to ask the candidate four questions: What do you think about banks? Define Python for me. Why did Schrodinger have a cat? Pork bellies or Orange juice? They are probably too cryptic for…
Read MoreLots of discussions these days are about AI. AI this, AI that, AI movie, AI influencers, even AI pop. (the K-pop group Mave do not exist – they are generated by AI) Every day, these developments shock and intrigue me. But what does this mean for banking and finance? Well, I guess there are some…
Read MoreI blogged about tokenizing everything the other day and my friend Efi made an interesting post the other day, related to this, about a report from the Boston Consulting Group. The report focuses upon India, which claims to be the third largest FinTech economy behind America and Britain, and specifically calls out a few key…
Read MoreWhen I was a lad – a good start for any commentary – we didn’t know nothing about money. I got pocket money from my dad but, if I begged hard enough and long enough, my dad would relent and buy me that Batman Corgi car I had been lusting after. At school, they taught…
Read MoreIt’s interesting how trends rise. Over the past few years, I’ve been writing a lot about the impact of ESG and AI on banking, so it intrigued me to see a new survey of over 300 bankers about what’s new in banking. Key findings of the report include: Emerging innovations such as AI are cited as…
Read More
I haven’t written about Ant and Alipay for a while, but did notice this press release the other day which is significant. The company is is now creating a payment ecosystem for Asian e-wallets. It’s not just Chinese. It’s everywhere Asia. Take note: Ant Group Introduces 10 Asian E-Wallets to Chinese Mainland in Major Expansion of…
Read MoreI was asking the other day whether it is better or worse that my children play video games rather than watch movies, and the reaction was: time moves on. It surely does. The gaming industry is now bigger than Hollywood and music combined, so what do I know? According to a report by SuperData Research,…
Read MoreA few people got excited about the news this week that Mercedes-Benz had launched in-car fingerprint payments in partnership with Mastercard. I didn’t. In fact, it still amazes me how little we have developed since my days at NCR, then owned by AT&T. This was the 1990s and AT&T had this fantastic set of adverts…
Read More
I saw an interesting comment the other day that got lots of shares, likes and clicks: fintech founders MUST have some experience in banking or financial services background first before they are funded. Many fintech neophytes destroy so much value not out of deliberate actions but just pure ignorance. Funnily enough the person making this…
Read MoreI was intrigued by a new report from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) which states that: “if the use of fintech grows rapidly outside of the regulated sector, it can generate risks to market conduct and integrity”. Shock, horror! And so? “New fintech developments might quickly become systemic due to network effects (for example, when…
Read More
This is quite a complicated update, but it came to mind when I saw that JPMorgan analysts are predicting stablecoins could destabilise the traditional financial markets. This is because the Federal Reserve decided in April that money funds created for the sole purpose of accessing its overnight reverse repo facility, which is called ON RRP,…
Read MoreWhen I was a lad – a good start for any commentary – we didn’t know nothing about money. I got pocket money from my dad but, if I begged hard enough and long enough, my dad would relent and buy me that Batman Corgi car I had been lusting after. At school, they taught…
Read More
It’s coming. It’s been talked about for years. It’s finally here. Tokens. Physical and digital assets are being tokenized. In fact, maybe your DNA has been tokenized. Soon, everything will be tokenized. We talked about this years ago, but it’s notable that VISA, SWIFT, BNY Mellon and JP Morgan are now tokenizing. In a number…
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It used to be simple: you died, left a will, told everyone where the money was, they shared it. Now, is it more complex? You die, leave a will, tell everyone where the money is … but the password was changed or has expired or your account is inaccessible for various reasons, as in you…
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We’ve talked for years about the need for micropayments. I can remember in the 1990s that the pay-per-view model demanded a payment for a single piece of information. Why should I subscribe for $30 a month to a website where one article has become relevant? Surely, I could pay $0.50 cents to read that one…
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I think it is time to launch a website of cryptoscams so yes, I’ve done it. It’s called cryptocrim.com, a space where all the crypto criminals will be thrown into Room 101, a place where you can consign anything you hate to history (although George Orwell had other ideas). The new site will be live…
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I spend a lot of time thinking about the way the network is impacting finance. The network is the network of citizens, enabled by mobile smartphones, the internet and cloud computing. The result is that everything can be developed and delivered on a peer-to-peer decentralised basis. The knock-on effect is that governments and centralised institutions…
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Those who read my blog often know that I see FinTech as the partnership between old bankers and young technology visionaries or, in context, a parent-child relationship. The parent wants stability and to maintain the status quo; the child wants to break down barriers and change the world. That’s a tough alignment, especially if you…
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I stumbled over this phrase the other day – The Office of the CFO – and thought it was interesting. It’s interesting because, as a Chief Financial Officer, CFO, you need to show knowledge and depth about money. That’s your job. So, as a CFO, what would you do today? Place money in a bank…
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I recently was introduced to VDK Bank, a community bank based in Ghent, Belgium, by Rik Coeckelbergs. The bank has done something interesting, launching a three-sided coin. The idea is to triple your thinking. The three-dimensional bank focuses upon customer, community and then the third dimension is to think about how money impacts the planet….
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During the summer, we are struck by massive wildfires taking place across the Americas and Europe. The devastation to Hawaii is specifically notable, but what about Greece, Tenerife and Canada and the rest. This is not normal. Then you go from wildfires in California to floods and mudslides in the same place. This is not…
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I was recently wondering which banks are the most green. Names come to mind like Co-operative Bank (UK), Triodos Bank (Netherlands), Alandsbanken (Finland), MyBank (China), Amalgamated Bank (America) and more, but they are few and far between. Some are committed and some are just paying lip service or, as we say, greenwashing. The difference is…
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I spotted an interview with Richard Curtis the other day about his campaign to change how pensions funds invest. The campaign is called Make my money matter and asks institutional investors, pension funds and banks to ensure that they invest in a sustainable way. Discussing this in an interview with Akshat Rathi in the podcast…
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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she expected former Mastercard chief executive Ajay Banga to be elected president of the World Bank as nominations drew to a close. It is not surprising as, when nominations closed at 6pm in Washington yesterday, there were no other publicly declared candidates. Who is Mr. Banga? According to Wikipedia, Ajay…
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I’ve been subscribed to Make My Money Matter for a while. It’s a movement started by Comic Relief co-founder Richard Curtis – he of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame – and is trying to put pressure on pension funds to influence financial institutions to only invest in things that protect our future, as in…
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Last year I invited Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, to write a monthly column explaining her motivations and methods. You can read those, and other climate and ESG related blogs, here. One specific column she contributed was asking how they could justify breaking bank windows. Extinction Rebellion lobbied HSBC and Barclays Bank specifically in…
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I was surprised to be voted one of the leading thinkers on Climate Change by Thinkers360 … Delighted to find myself as one of the top thinkers about #ClimateChange 2022 from @thinkers360https://t.co/gKj0JwICSZ — Chris Skinner (@Chris_Skinner) January 3, 2023 It’s probably based on my last book, and I don’t think of myself as a climate…
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I haven’t written about Green Finance for a while, but then saw this over on Bloomberg and couldn’t resist sharing. The need for a global greenwashing framework by Tim Quinson, Bloomberg Greenwashing may be the biggest risk to the future of ESG investing, but there’s no firm agreement on what it means in a legal…
Read MoreLots of discussions these days are about AI. AI this, AI that, AI movie, AI influencers, even AI pop. (the K-pop group Mave do not exist – they are generated by AI) Every day, these developments shock and intrigue me. But what does this mean for banking and finance? Well, I guess there are some…
Read MoreWe’ve had DeFi, CeFi, ReFi and more, but now it’s time for GeFi. If those phrases confuse you, we have Decentralised Finance versus Centralised Finance; we have Regenerative Finance, and now we have Generative Finance, or GeFi for short. What is GeFi? It’s the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into finance. This all started with…
Read MoreWhen I was a lad – a good start for any commentary – we didn’t know nothing about money. I got pocket money from my dad but, if I begged hard enough and long enough, my dad would relent and buy me that Batman Corgi car I had been lusting after. At school, they taught…
Read More
I was intrigued by The Financial Brand’s autumn (Fall) magazine about younger folks or, as some call them, Gen Z. Personally, I’m not a fan of demographics. You can throw people into buckets of ages, but not everyone of a certain age behaves the same way. Neverhteless, there are some interesting perspectives of how Gen…
Read MoreI was asking the other day whether it is better or worse that my children play video games rather than watch movies, and the reaction was: time moves on. It surely does. The gaming industry is now bigger than Hollywood and music combined, so what do I know? According to a report by SuperData Research,…
Read More
I just got a copy of Gartner’s emerging risks report for the second quarter 2023. A summary of the report is below but, before you read that, the charts speak volumes. First, we talk about PEST – Political, Economic, Social, Technological – forces for change. Right now, unsurprisingly, most change forces are based upon economic…
Read MoreIt’s coming. It’s been talked about for years. It’s finally here. Tokens. Physical and digital assets are being tokenized. In fact, maybe your DNA has been tokenized. Soon, everything will be tokenized. We talked about this years ago, but it’s notable that VISA, SWIFT, BNY Mellon and JP Morgan are now tokenizing. In a number…
Read More
In June, the EU put forward proposals for a new Payment Services Directive, PSD3. Having been involved in these developments since their inception in the 2000s, I was intrigued to read the text of PSD3, particularly as the main point bankers made about PSD2 is that they were forced to open up to Third Party…
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There have been quite a lot of annoying changes to twitter in recent months. Rebranded as X with a scruffy looking logo, the service is trying to monetize its users by making the services more and more difficult to use … unless you pay. From an owners view, that makes sense. The platform needs to…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … Generative finance, or GeFi for short We’ve had DeFi, CeFi, ReFi and more, but now it’s time for GeFi. If those phrases confuse you, we have Decentralised Finance versus Centralised Finance; we have Regenerative Finance, and now we have Generative Finance, or GeFi for short. What is GeFi?…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Gaming + AI + The Metaverse = ? I was asking the other day whether it is better or worse that my children play video games rather than watch movies, and the reaction was: time moves on. It surely does. The gaming industry is now bigger than Hollywood…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … Can you answer these four questions? It made me laugh. Someone posed the question: what is the hiring process for fintech? After a short thought, my reply was to ask the candidate four questions: What do you think about banks? Define Python for me. Why did Schrodinger have…
Read MoreThe main blog discussions this week include … A new Payment Services Directive, PSD3: what’s in it? In June, the EU put forward proposals for a new Payment Services Directive, PSD3. Having been involved in these developments since their inception in the 2000s, I was intrigued to read the text of PSD3, particularly as the…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … What happens to crypto when you die? It used to be simple: you died, left a will, told everyone where the money was, they shared it. Now, is it more complex? You die, leave a will, tell everyone where the money is … but the password was changed…
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This week’s main blog discussions included … 50 shades of green – is your bank sustainable? I was recently wondering which banks are the most green. Names come to mind like Co-operative Bank (UK), Triodos Bank (Netherlands), Alandsbanken (Finland), MyBank (China), Amalgamated Bank (America) and more, but they are few and far between. Some are…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … The best challenger bank in the world? Brazil’s FinTech giant Nubank just crushed its 2Q 2023 earnings. We have never seen growth like NU’s in any challenger bank. In fact, some would claim – including me – that this ten-year-old company is not only the strongest neobank in…
Read MoreThis week’s main blog discussions include … What will happen when your brain is ’embedded’? I was thinking about embedded, intelligent finance and imagining the future. There are many scenarios, but one that I kept returning to is when you have infi inside (intelligent finance inside). A chip in your brain, and you can run…
Read MoreThe main blog discussions this week include … You can’t handle the truth My typical day is spent with news channels in the background. It makes me feel like I’m in an office. The non-stop chat and talk of people about the problems of our world. Thing is that, the more you hear global news,…
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This week’s main blog discussions include … Is the City going the way of the shopping mall? I’ve blogged several times that, as people move to online everything, the retail main street stores and shopping malls are dying. In a similar fashion, bank branches are closing faster than ever and becoming restaurants or coffee houses…
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Thinkers360 Thought Leader
Chris Skinner - Financial Markets Advisor of the Year - The Finanser - UK 2023
Best Financial Markets Advisor of the Year 2023
