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I got into a conference this week (for a change) where the presenter of a roboadvising wealth manager got into a bit of a Q&A scuffle with an audience member.  Felix Niederer, founder and CEO of Zurich-based start-up True Wealth showed the stats for their customers. Most of them are over 30, and the real…

I’ve spent a lot of this week talking about marketplaces.  We have a growing number of financial marketplaces appearing.  Lending marketplaces, credit marketplaces, payments marketplaces and more.  A marketplace is the bazaar.  Market stall holders gather to meet with prospective clients, and the digital version of the marketplace is the focal point for many FinTech…

5,300 Wells Fargo employees have been caught faking customer account openings in order to hit their sales targets. That sounds pretty disgusting doesn’t it, but it’s nothing new.  In fact, we here in old America or, as some call it, Britain, have been living with this for half a decade. During the 2000s, leading up…

I was at a conference the other day when the presenter showed this quote from the Wall Street Journal: The question is so simple it seems silly: What is a bank?  Of course you know the answer. A bank pools savings and then allocates that capital. Simple, right? But that’s just the start.  In 2016 a…

As mentioned last week, the CIO’s role is changing from running an empire of maintenance engineers to organising a distributed development organisation. The change in the role is one from a hierarchical control structure, where everything is proprietary and internal, to a flattened organisation that is open and broad. Much of the developments will come…

  Here are our key posts for the past week … Do banks need a CIO? I was talking with a technology firm the other day.  They offer everything from cloud to core systems.  Their issue is that the competition wins every time.  Not IBM.  Not Accenture.  Not TCS.  Not FIS.  Not SAP.  Not any…

Building on yesterday’s blog (Do bank’s need a CIO?) , the key misunderstanding is the role.  Most banks thing the CIO is there to run the technology.  They’re not.  That’s what they used to do.  That’s not the job for the future. First and foremost, the person leading technology developments in any incumbent bank of…

I was talking with a technology firm the other day.  They offer everything from cloud to core systems.  Their issue is that the competition wins every time.  Not IBM.  Not Accenture.  Not TCS.  Not FIS.  Not SAP.  Not any of the big names you could mention in such areas.  No, their competition is the CIO….

I’ve blogged a lot about digital identities, but failed to cover an in-depth review of the largest identity program in the world: Aadhaar.  It’s been very remiss of me, but I’ve been waiting for the right moment and now seems to be that moment. Aadhaar is well known for those in the identity field, but…

Building upon Friday’s discussion of how the system treats the poor, there are interesting movements afoot at the Brookings Institute.  If you’re not familiar with Brookings, it is one of America’s oldest Think Tanks and provides independent research into social sciences, particularly economics, governance and foreign policy, for the US Government. The Institute has a…