ValueWeb

Building on yesterday’s blog (Do bank’s need a CIO?) , the key misunderstanding is the role.  Most banks thing the CIO is there to run the technology.  They’re not.  That’s what they used to do.  That’s not the job for the future. First and foremost, the person leading technology developments in any incumbent bank of…

Building upon Friday’s discussion of how the system treats the poor, there are interesting movements afoot at the Brookings Institute.  If you’re not familiar with Brookings, it is one of America’s oldest Think Tanks and provides independent research into social sciences, particularly economics, governance and foreign policy, for the US Government. The Institute has a…

Someone recently equated banks and their systems and structures, to the underground in London.  It’s a lot of pipes, wires, cables and tunnels that were built in the Victorian times and are still operating today.  You have engineers on the tracks every night and day, trying to keep the systems running, whilst also trying to…

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…

In 2009, I coined the word BaaS.  No, nothing to do with sheep!  Instead, BaaS stands for Banking-as-a-Service.  In 2016, everyone is talking about this: Banking as a Platform (BaaP), The Financial Brand, March 2016 Banking-as-a-Service: Common play of banks and fintech, FinTech Rankings, March 2016 ‘Banking as a Service’ for Fintechs Seeking Scale, American…

WARNING WARNING WARNING This is a semi-technical blog update and it is rather long (20 minutes read). If you don’t like dealing with bits and bytes, you may want to turn away now. I’ve been meaning to also write a blog update on all things about blockchain for a while, but just haven’t had time. …

I can remember a few years ago that the UK pound was almost at the level of being valued at $2.  Two dollars to the pound.  Amazing.  I brought a lot of American stuff that year.  Yesterday, I bought something and it was $1.30 to the pound.  Shoot.  The dinner for $100 that a few…

I was piqued by Victor Matarranz’s [SEVP Head of Group Strategy and Chairman’s Office, Banco Santander] presentation at MoneyConf last week, mainly because he began by talking about Fintech 1.0 versus Fintech 2.0. Fintech 1.0 he defined as the emergence of peer-to-peer lenders and new payments companies between 2010 and 2014.  During this time everyone…

I’ve written about Bitcoin and blockchain for half a decade, and now banks are all talking about it too. There is a belief that the blockchain technology that came from the Bitcoin structure could revolutionise banking. But there’s a problem, not with blockchain protocol, but with the hype and confusion that surrounds it. How will banks…

I caught sight of a report by Deloitte over the weekend that says the marketplace lenders like Zopa and Lending Club are no serious threat to banks.  This follows the report by Goldman Sachs a year ago, that said 20% of bank lending will move to these platforms over the next decade.  Who’s right and…