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On Tuesday the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a UK Government Agency, told British banks that they must digitalise or suffer penalties.  In a report entitled Making banks work harder for you, they have ordered the UK banks to digitalise within two years or face regulatory fines. The key headlines include, under what the CMA…

As my readers will know, I regularly interview innovators of start-ups and banks of how they see the world.  These interviews constitute a third of the ValueWeb and Digital Bank books.  In the interests of maintaining these case studies, as I find them interesting, I recently met Ben Milne, Founder and CEO of Dwolla. In case you’re…

I got into an interesting debate with two good friends in Asia over the weekend.  I was sitting at home in the UK of course, but these days we are all connected globally in real-time so if you post something on Facebook or Twitter, you can soon find yourself in a global discussion.  This one…

Friend of the Financial Services Club and journalist with Financial News Anna Irrera has recently started producing a weekly roundup of FinTech news.  She’s kindly agreed to let me republish this summary here on The Finanser, so here goes: On fintech and pensions… BBVA’s Outside Venture Fund Backs Retirement Startup (American Banker) Propel Venture Partners, the venture…

Here are our key posts for the past week … Looking for a live Unicorn I was chatting about Unicorns yesterday.  I won’t say which one we talked about, but one specific firm was being picked on as unsustainable and incorrectly valued.  I was particularly surprised to hear that their cost of customer acquisition is…

I was chatting about Unicorns yesterday.  I won’t say which one we talked about, but one specific firm was being picked on as unsustainable and incorrectly valued.  I was particularly surprised to hear that their cost of customer acquisition is estimated to be $400 per customer.  For a start-up firm that is dealing in high…

Yesterday I blogged about the flagship lead of the Bank of England to support innovation and create refreshed central bank digital structures.  They are experimenting with everything from a Britcoin to a FinTech Accelerator program, and these operations have filtered through the system into RegTech programs from Project Innovate to the Regulatory Sandbox. So now…

I like to point at the fact that the Bank of England is taking a leadership role in FinTech, but it goes wider and deeper than this.  Bear in mind, the regulator –  the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) –  lies under the Bank’s control.  Before the Global Financial Crisis, it was independent and part of the…

It’s August – the quietest month in business.  Everyone I email sends back an out of office autoreply, and yet I’m here still blogging.  So what to blog about?  Well, this month might be a little inconsistent, but I do love posting funny stories in bank branches.  The reason is (a) they’re funny and (b)…

Friend of the Financial Services Club and journalist with Financial News Anna Irrera has recently started producing a weekly roundup of FinTech news.  She’s kindly agreed to let me republish this summary here on The Finanser, so here goes: A good roundup of startups bringing AI to fintech…  From Algorithmic Trading To Personal Finance Bots: 41 Startups…