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Shaping the future of finance

Technology

The greatest minds want to avoid Earth’s destruction – do you?

As recently mentioned, I attended the Re|source 2012 conference at Oxford University last week. The meeting took place in the historic School of Examinations building … … and was a meeting of the great and the good to discuss how to build a sustainable world. The conference had many of the leaders from politics and…

Oxfoerds

Crowdfunding: a clear alternative to banks

I’ve talked a lot on this blog about P2P or social lending, mainly because I’ve been involved with Zopa since its launch and followed its siblings: Boober, Smava, Prosper, Lending Club, Ratesetter, Cashare, Loanio … Suffice to say there is a world of direct social lending out there and it’s now big business (Zopa recently gained…

Pebble

Banks need a human approach to automation (take note RBS)

The riskiness of bank tech failure We all caught sight of RBS NatWest’s failure with their computer glitch over the past few weeks (Ulster Bank customers are still offline – that’s damning). If you didn’t, the gist of the story is that the bank’s core payment processing system is written with CA-7 software .  A software…

The Future Bank: Augmented, Social and Mobile

We had a great discussion at the Financial Services Club Central & Eastern Europe (FSClub CEE) this week.  Now in its fourth year of operation, the Club meets regularly at the residence of the British Ambassador in Vienna, Austria (see postnote if you want a laugh).  The theme of the meeting was: “the future of…

FSCLUB PIC 1

Social mobile will make financial inclusion a basic human right

More interesting dialogue about banking yesterday, and this time about financial inclusion. The fact that mobile phone ubiquity is creating a wirelessly connected planet, is a key part of changing our world for more inclusion. First, six billion people now have 1:1, P2P connections. You only need to look at mobile densities by continent to realise…

Mobile

Square: the Apple of finance

In case you didn’t see it, Wired magazine ran an article about Jack Dorsey and Square this month.  Throughout the article, they compare Jack Dorsey to Steve Jobs and Square with Apple. In a long opening – the first page is just about pouring tea! – they finally get to the crunch so here’s my shorter,…

Jack-dorsey-400x300

RBS-NatWest proves that technology IS the bank

The big news at the end of last week is that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) had a computer crash, affecting all of the UK bank including NatWest and Ulster Bank. It caught headlines worldwide: NatWest and RBS computer glitch stretches into third day – Telegraph.co.uk  NatWest opens on Sunday as IT glitch causes chaos‎ Reuters UK…

Metro natwest

Fidor Bank: the most innovative bank concept out there

After discussing Metro Bank yesterday, the other presentation that caught my attention at innotribe Belfast was from Fidor Bank. The two presentations are like going from one extreme to another however – Metro with their branch based focus compared with Fidor with their GLoSoMo (Global-Local, Social Mobile) approach. I interviewed Fidor Bank CEO Matthias Kröner…

Fidor Bank interview

Is your boss a demented maniac? I hope so

I’ve spent a long time working for maniacs, idiots and psychopaths, and now I know why: that’s what it takes to get to the top in banking technology circles. It’s been scientifically proven too – to get to the top of a company, you need to stay there a long time, have psychopathic traits and…

Banks take IT efficiency gains in bonus payments

As mentioned, we had a keynote presentation at the Financial Services Club from Andrew Haldane, Executive Director responsible for Financial Stability with the Bank of England, last week. The presentation was delivered under the Chatham House Rule, so I cannot say too much about what Andy covered, but there was a theme throughout that may…

Legend

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