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I remember being involved in a business process re-engineering project for an insurance firm some years ago.  We looked at how the underwriting process worked on complex insurance risks and discovered that in the middle of the process, the documentation would move to the overseas desk.  It would sit there for a day or two,…

I regularly attend conferences where several themes crop up around disruption – that word we hate – disintermediation, and the end of banking as we know it.  The problem is I’ve heard it for 30 years and it hasn’t happened … yet.  Will it?  Let’s have a look. The first theme is that banks are…

Talking about transformation at conferences every day gets you into a mantra.  My mantra is leadership and how banks lack technological leadership.  The pushback is that you have too many technologists without banking knowledge.  We need banks run by people who understand money, and they can tell the technologists what to do. I’m not so…

I’m often talking about Victorian visions of the future to illustrate the issue we have today. The Victorian vision of the future was dealing with a number of problems, one of which was horse shit. Manure. Manure was a massive issue.   Victorian Britain had too many horses and carriages on the streets, and the horses…

I know many of my twitter followers have seen this news already, but here’s the official announcement of the partnership we are creating with Life.SREDA in Singapore. SINGAPORE-BASED LIFE.SREDA LAUNCHES $100 MILLION BLOCKCHAIN INVESTMENT FUND LONDON, APRIL 18 2016 Life.SREDA, a venture capital fund based in Singapore, has partnered with financial expert and fintech specialist…

Our main stories of this week includes … Marketplace lending comes of age One of the interviewees in my new book ValueWeb is Ron Suber, President of Prosper Marketplace Lending. Ron gave a speech last week which is summarized below. Well worth a read. Markeplace Lending: Evolution of an Asset Class (The following post is excerpted from a…

One of the interviewees in my new book ValueWeb is Ron Suber, President of Prosper Marketplace Lending. Ron gave a speech last week which is summarized below. Well worth a read. Marketplace Lending: Evolution of an Asset Class (The following post is excerpted from a keynoted speech I gave at the 2016 LendIt USA conference) Over…

I had a lovely conversation with a group of investment bankers last night about technology transformation in capital markets. During the opening, a consistent theme cropped up: standards, interoperability, collaboration and cooperation … or lack of it. It is interesting that, in the buy and sell side world, few standards have worked except for FIX…

I just had a really interesting, off-the-record, discussion with a banker. Can’t give too much detail therefore, but here’s how the conversation went: “So, what’s it like working for MegaRetailBank?” “Shocking”, he said. “They are completely branch focused. Here’s an illustration. They launched a new retail bank subsidiary in a country in 2008. That country…

Those of you who know me, know that I hate the word channel and any adjunct that goes with it. This is because channel shows a lack of digital depth, as it’s just sticking something on top of the old architecture or lipstick on a pig if you prefer. It doesn’t work. I have other…