Blog Index

The main blog discussions this week included … You need to add physical to digital, not vice versa I had a long drive last week and noticed five or six massive warehouses by the side of the motorway. It made me reflect on a new warehouse world. I’ve already lamented the loss of main street…

This week’s main blog discussions included … Hello, would you like to be our CEO? I was imagining if I walked into a big bank job today. You are hired as CEO of Mega-Global-Bank PLC. What’s going on? Well, number one, no-one has any idea where the economy is going. There’s a global pandemic. Everything…

This week’s main blog discussions included … The economic outlook post-pandemic: more caring and sharing? There are 100s of economic forecast reports out there, but I got one this morning from the Asian bank DBS with the following headlines: Growth normalising The reopening of US and European economies points to a snapback in economic growth…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Why did HSBC dump their biggest corporate client? Talking about HSBC often drags me into political controversy. For example, when I criticised the bank for not making a stand over the Hong Kong protests, I got a lot of pushback. Frankly, I don’t like to dip my feet into…

This week’s main blog discussions include … If you think Open Banking is where it’s at, think again As someone who has set up a number of small businesses, there are three major tasks that I hate: Doing the accounts Tax returns Invoices As the business owner, all I want to do is my job,…

This week’s main blogs include: Should banks have more technologists than Microsoft? I saw an interesting article about the Head of Technology at a major bank, let’s call it ABC Bank for the purposes of my column, and the article began by saying that this guy “commands a budget of $10 billion and a team of 40,000…

This week’s main blog updates include … What currency will you be using in 2121? Having watched the emergence of cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for a decade, I have made a firm view. Most of the people involved in this space are deluded and naïve; most of the people involved…

The main blog discussions this week include … We are the Robots I’ve claimed for some time that machines cannot do what humans do, because they have no heart. They purely do what we program them to do. True. Yet if you watch movies from Ex Machina to Terminator, machines can turn to do what…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Who is BIG NUTS ASS? I woke up and, as usual, checked the banking app for any updates or changes. There was a payment received.  Quite a major payment. It came from BIG NUTS ASS*. BIG NUTS ASS*? Who is BIG NUTS ASS*? I have no idea. I…

This week’s main blog headlines include: Is new banking ten times (10x) better? Investment banking, Corporate banking, Commercial banking, Private banking and Retail banking are all very different. Too often, commentators just talk about ‘banking’. It’s not all the same. In fact, an awful lot of retail banking is propped up by investment and commercial…