Future

Back in January, I made 10 predictions for 2017. Let’s see how near or off the mark they were: The FinTech buzz continues, but not in the USA (look East) WRONG. According to KPMG’s Pulse of FinTech report, Q3 2017, I’m wrong. Asia was doing ok but nowhere near as strong as 2016, whilst America…

I often talk about faster horses and how banks think digital is doing banking cheaper and faster. It’s all about efficiency and effectiveness. So, I was asked the other day: where is the car? After all, it’s easy to call out banks for doing banking as usual but, if I cannot show them a car,…

Taking of moving from the concept of a Universal Basic Income to money without government to tokens to credits, I’ve been reading a fascinating book recently on Star Trek’s economics called Trekonomics. Released in 2016, I thought it would be some frivolous Trekkie’s drooling over the wonder of the Federation’s Galaxies but, instead, it is…

Innovate Finance has been working with the Department of International Trade (DIT) on a report on blockchain and the future of financial services. The report was developed with the help of the Economist Intelligence Unit and is now available here. The Executive Summary is as follows: From Concept to Reality: How Blockchain will Reshape the Financial…

I was at a presentation where Robin Speculand, Singapore-based author and speaker, asked: Is it better to have a great strategy implemented badly or a bad strategy implemented well? Most people – about 4 out of 5 – raised their hand for the latter option. I raised mine for the former. We had a bit…

I still talk a lot about blockchain, distributed ledgers, cryptocurrencies and more, but often feel it’s falling on deaf ears. The price of bitcoin flies around in the $7,000 a coin bracket, having risen from a tenth of that amount a year ago; and many people talk about blockchain and distributed ledger interchangeably, as did…

I regularly talk about BBVA (Spain) and DBS (Singapore) as banks that are doing the right things for digital transformation. They both started early, have a leadership team who are committed and have been driving down this road with results. Results in terms of awards and recognition within the technology community, but what about in…

I was in a conversation with a regulator about bank competition, and they wondered how I saw banks changing. In particular, they were concerned about collegiate – read that as bank cartels – actions by the banks to protect their own interests. I thought about it and said that I did not believe that banks…

I was listening to someone talking about monolith versus microservices structures recently, and they likened it to an old car versus a new one. Old cars were made of metal and welded together into a solid machine where, if any part breaks, you have to replace the whole machine. The machine is unwieldy, slow and…

As Sweden was the first European country to use cash for payments back in 1661, it’s unsurprising that it’s the first European country that wants to be cashless. This is why, for several years, I’ve been watching the regular speeches by Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of the Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, talking about eradicating…