Numbers

I have a few friends around the world that I pick up on, and The World Bank and CGAP are amongst that crew. Therefore, when I saw that Peter Zetterli, senior financial sector specialist with CGAP, was blogging about financial inclusion I couldn’t but help reach out to him and ask him to write a…

I guess this week must be the week where I’ve found a lot of useful free research, as here’s another one. This time from Genpact, “a global professional services firm delivering digital transformation”. Some interesting stats in this report: In 2018, the world’s largest 1,000 banks held 12% more tier-1 capital than in 2017, the…

In a final perspective around women and technology and finance, I welcome the thoughts of Ron Shevlin, the snark himself. In a recent article on Forbes, Ron wrote about what women want from banking. The research his company Cornerstone produced some interesting results. Enjoy … The Four Things Women Want (From Financial Services) There are…

I see lots of surveys and research about the use of technology in finance. Things like 47 percent of consumers are interested in biometric payments or 80 percent of consumers would use mobile payments. Then you look at the adoption rates and the actual usage is more like 4 and 8 percent respectively … if…

I remember some years ago that Nikolas Sarkozy wanted to bring in a law that would force call centre operators to tell French citizens where they were located, due to the backlash over offshore call centres. I wonder what he would make of today’s world, where most French and European banks have given all their…

There’s a new edition of The FinTech Times that has just been released. It was designed to coincide with the Spring events in Asia that would be kicking off round about now but, as most of you now know, all events have been postponed. Nevertheless, with contributions from 11:FS, WeBank, Ant Financial’s AI team and…

Some of you may know that I write a monthly column for The Banker magazine, and have been doing this for almost twenty years! But The Banker goes back way longer than my column. In fact, it began in January 1926 when the first issue was published and is now almost a century old. Interestingly, since 1970 they’ve been…

I just found that Deutsche Bank Research issued three in-depth reports in January looking at the future of payments: Part I: Cash: The Dinosaur Will Survive… For Now Cash will survive. But digital currencies’ potential could re-balance global economic power. Part II: Moving To Digital Wallets And The Extinction Of Plastic Cards As changes in…

I just received a report from Deloitte about credit and debit cards. It says the future is not so bright: “more payment choices, along with changing consumer preferences, are threatening the long-term viability of the credit card business model.” Damn. I said that fifteen years ago. It made me think about what I was presenting…

Another useful person in my online network is Steve McLaughlin of @FTPartners, who I spotted sent a tweet last week saying they had produced a challenger bank report. FT Partners’ in-depth report, “The Rise of Challenger Banks” now features an exclusive interview with Brandon Krieg, Co-Founder and CEO of @Stash – view the full report…