Fintech

2023 is proving to be a punishing year for banks, finance, technology and fintech. Firms have seen massive downgrades of their market cap, and we have seen the demise of major companies ranging from Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic and Credit Suisse. Some say that this is a crisis. However, it seems more like a…

I hesitate to write this, as it is controversial. But then I am not afraid to confront controversy. After the tragic implosion of Titan, the OceanGate submersible submarine that was doing the deep dive to the Titanic … … emails came to light where the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, flagrantly disregarded warnings that the…

I recently hosted a meeting of C-suite bankers to talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in banking. It was a great discussion and my summary would be: it’s scary and exciting. As I blogged about the other day, AI may be our future or our doom. Which way do we look? The meeting had a theme…

Technology is making catfishing a new art form that is getting better every single day. What is catfishing? Catfishing refers to when a person takes information and images, typically from other people, and uses them to create a new identity for themselves. Therefore, I was struck by this when a tweet by my friend Dave Birch noted…

On the one hand we want order and control; on the other, we don’t want to be ordered or controlled. We want governance, but we don’t want to be governed. We appreciate structure, but we don’t want to have that structure tell us what to do. The issue is a basic one: how far can…

I did a search of “Jamie Dimon” the other day, and was intrigued by the results. It reached everything from how cryptocurrencies are dangerous to Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender connected to everyone from Prince Andrew to Jes Staley, formerly with JP Morgan and CEO of Barclays. The search made me realise how much…

After Brexit, I hear and read a lot of negative things about doing business with Britain these days. The latest is Revolut complaining that Britain doesn’t like them. That’s not true. It’s more to do with Revolut cannot deliver their accounts on time (they blame the regulator for this) and cannot get the banking licence…

Some predict that, in the near future, the world will be run by AI robots, even Liverpool football team! The thing about AI is that it is only as good as the input it is given. For example, ChatGPT couldn’t give answers to any questions you ask it, without those answers being previously written by…

I’ve met many FinTech founders and the one thing they have in common is youthful optimism (even those over 30), but I was taken with an article written by Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian the other day asking why so many so many under 30-year-old founders face jail. You see the thing about youthful optimism…

As an advocate of digitalisation, I am finding myself more and more conflicted these days. Apps don’t work; settings change; updates mess up my services; processes break and cannot be repaired without a reset; I can’t make a payment as there is no WiFi or mobile data; I can’t get home as FreeNow and Uber…