For the past year, there’s been lots of talk about Fintech Unicorns – start-up companies with over a billion dollar valuation launched since 2000. Jim Bruene at Finovate – register for Finovate Europe with 20% discount using FSClub20 – wrote about so many Fintech unicorns in July 2015, showing the list increasing four-fold in just a…
Another key development of 2015 has been the open sourcing of bank services. I’ve talked for a while now about Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) – first blog entry almost seven years ago – and this forecast that anyone in the near future would be able to build their own bank through apps, APIs and analytics. The core of…
The world changes every day, and some of us feel it changes faster every day. This is evidenced by the rapid cycle change in Fintech where last year’s hardly mentioned thing has become this year’s hot thing. Blockchain is the case in point. However, as pointed out at Fintech Connect this week, most of this…
I’m often asked how much is being invested in Fintech and where is it going? Based upon a lot of assumptions and studies, the figures this year look like they’re heading near $30 billion invested in Fintech, with most in Silicon Valley. A third is in payments, of which 10% is in blockchain and bitcoin…
I saw a fascinating presentation by Porter Erisman, author of Alibaba’s World, last week. Porter was involved in the early days of Alibaba, having lived in China since 1994. As an American in China it must have been a fascinating experience, and Porter talked about how Alibaba was formed and how it differs to Amazon…
There’s been a lot of debate about millennials and their likes and dislikes. I myself cite regular surveys that millennials would rather go to the dentist than visit their bank, and that surveys of millennials find no bank brands are desired. In some ways this gives a false impression, as we have to think that…
So I was listening to a couple of banking folks discussing the search for new talent. I didn’t know until I heard the discussion, how tough it is these days. I mean I knew that MBA students had moved away from banking in their droves to seek careers with consultancies, but generally thought banks were doing…
In that same dialogue about when banks should act to block, buy or beat new competition, I realised that the new competition is doing something quite clever. Unsurprisingly, Fintech firms look at banking and realise that it’s pretty dull and onerous stuff. AML, KYC, compliance, audit, regulatory reporting, rules and oversight of business are the…
I had an interesting discussion about change in the banking markets again the other day. We were citing emerging new players like Square, Stripe, Klarna and Lending Club, as well as players that have already emerged like PayPal and Apple Pay. In all of these cases, my colleague felt that these players have all added…
