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Apr 24, 2015

Rip it up and start again …

I’m having so many conversations about so much stuff that my head is spinning these days. Fintech, digital, transformation, change … it seems to be on the lips of everyone I meet. Yet the one thing that stands out is that it’s not necessarily happening. This was brought home to me as I sat on…

Apr 8, 2015

The reports of my bank’s death are greatly exaggerated

There are a number of debates that pop-up regularly including the war on cash, the end of the branch and the death of banking. The last one I haven’t blogged about much because it’s irrelevant, but I’ll blog about it today as there are two camps of thought: incumbents and new entrants; and today’s blog…

Mar 26, 2015

Corporate bankers … do you need to wake up?

So I’m talking with a group of corporate bankers and the conversation goes into the normal alleyway. This alleyway is the one that says: “we are corporate bankers and will not be disrupted”. The conversation goes something like: So all the hot and sexy stuff with Fintech is in the consumer space. It’s retail and…

Mar 20, 2015

Why the mobile ecosystem just became easy

I had a good chat about the mobile financial ecosystem today. Maybe a good example of that ecosystem is represented below: What this portrays is that it’s complicated. There’s a lot of players doing a lot of things and the bank has to herd cats to make it work. What’s interesting though is that this…

Mar 19, 2015

Will Facebook and Apple Pay kill Visa and MasterCard?

So Facebook announced clarification of plans to rollout Facebook Pay, an easy way to pay friends through Facebook using your debit card. They had considered credit cards, but want to avoid fraud and risk and felt the debit card is the way to go. Initially US-based, the service will gradually be released worldwide. Here are…

Mar 12, 2015

UK Financial Inclusion Report Recommends 22 Things For 2020 (Some For Banks)

Yesterday the UK’s Financial Inclusion Commission published their report on Financial Inclusion for the UK. The Financial Inclusion Commission is an independent body of experts and parliamentarians who came together to put financial inclusion back on the political agenda ahead of the 2015 General Election. The Commission set out to: take stock of the extent of…

Mar 9, 2015

After the glitch, RBS closes GTS (or how a global bank becomes a national one)

I was surprised to see friend of the Financial Services Club Carole Berndt leave Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) for Australian shores in January (actually Hong Kong with ANZ). Even though she’s an Aussie, the surprise was that Carole had only moved to RBS to shake up their Global Transaction Services (GTS) business the year before,…

Feb 26, 2015

How are banks reacting to FinTech?

After blogging about how hot Fintech is, I stumbled across this article by Avinash Swamy (HT to Bradley Leimer), and asked Avinash if I could place this on the blog as it shows the other side of the coin about how banks are reacting to Fintech threats and opportunities. Avinash kindly agreed, so read on …….

Feb 19, 2015

How much profit does a bank make from your bank account?

How much profit does a bank make per annum on a typical retail bank deposit account? It’s a simple question. What is the total revenue a bank generates from the average retail bank account – the costs? Do you know? Does your bank? I’m not so sure, and it’s a conundrum that drives to the…

Feb 12, 2015

In the age of the internet, is it the poor who will be poorer?

Here’s a good question for you: if cars self-drive, what happens to motor insurance? The reason I ask the question is that I saw this really cool app in Ukraine from Privatbank last year that allows me to drive into the gas station and refuel my car, without having to open the door. So what you…