Future

I was reflecting on a question posed to me recently by a Turkish banker.  He asked me: “why is it that the Western banks are always talking about legacy?”  I knew exactly what he was getting at, as the banks I deal with in USA, UK, France, Germany and other European nations are always fretting…

I’m spending the week in China with Alibaba and ANT Financial. More details to follow, as this is all building towards a case study chapter in my new book Digital Human, and sat amongst 2,000 fans listening to Jack Ma yesterday and his vision of the future. Jack spoke in Chinese and I was listening…

I got to thinking about yesterday’s post on humanity in part due to a discussion of global banking.  Global, universal banking was the mantra of the 2000s and HSBC, Citi, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Deutsche and more were all jumping on the bandwagon.  After the global financial crisis, they all jumped off it again,…

I’ve pretty much been travelling the world on business non-stop for thirty years, and something has fundamentally changed during that period.  Obviously, the internet and mobile and global connectivity, but also the homogeneity of globalisation.  I remember flying into Singapore’s brand spanking new Changi Airport in 1987 and my disappointment at being greeted by McDonald’s. …

I was chatting with a friend about what he’s up to these days.  He started talking earnestly about looking up his family ancestry.  With the internet these days, you can quickly find your grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents and even your birth mother.  He had traced some parts of his lineage to the 1600s in…

It’s a decade since the iPhone launched.  Steve Jobs unveiled the new phone on January 9th, 2007. The first iPhones were made available to the grubby hands of the public on June 29th, 2007, exactly ten years ago today.  This was originally just for American consumers with the UK, France, and Germany following in November…

I was going to blog about something different, when I spotted this article in The Financial Times about Klarna gaining a banking license over the weekend (thanks to Pascal Bouvier).  The commentary has two key sentences, which I’ve highlighted, that illustrate all the things I have been saying about Banking-as-a-Service and curated marketplaces brilliantly, namely: Banking becomes…

After my blog yesterday, about banks having to move from being control freaks in a proprietary operation building everything to becoming collaborative partners in an open marketplace curating everything, I was asked: “how do you make money out of curation?” It’s a good question, as marketplace curators make money very differently from proprietary product providers. …

I regularly blog about the same subject, namely CHANGE YOUR CORE SYSTEMS.  Banks do a great job of not listening to me, but that’s because they’ve caught themselves in Catch 22: screwed if I change them and screwed if I don’t.  How did they get into this mess and how can they get out of…

I thought I’d wait until after the weekend to write a post about the implications of the UK election results.  It’s not my place to write about the pros and cons of the election campaigns, although I will say that the alienation of the elderly and those who are parents by the Conservative’s campaign –…