Tag Archives: fintech

Weekly interesting news round up

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Here’s a summary of interesting stories I’ve seen over the last week. I try to concentrate on the stories which aren’t necessarily mainstream.

Banking

Let’s start with some good news! ING ran a trial of contactless charity donation boxes. The trial resulted in average donations doubling old-fashioned cash collection tins. I think the new donation box design could be improved, but it still encourages generosity to charities. .

Apple is close to launching their person to person payments service. It’s purely proprietary – which means only Apple users will be able to send and receive payments. I predict Apple Pay Cash will have a bigger cash stockpile this time next year than many high street banks. This is because users will keep their received cash on their device, simply because it will be easier than transferring it into a bank account. https://t.co/agcKxKigJx Continue reading Weekly interesting news round up →

InsTech London September event

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19 start ups appeared at InsTech London September
Here are the 19 start ups at InsTech London September

Last night was the latest InsTech London event. InsTech, or InsureTech or InsurTech (please can someone confirm the standard nomenclature?) applies to the insurance industry in the way that FinTech was the industry disruption in the financial industry.

Insurance is ripe for this disruption because so many business processes are done on paper (quite literally – and this is where the term underwriter comes from) or a combination of Excel spreadsheets and email. Continue reading InsTech London September event →

Book review: The Fintech Book

Book review, Business, Technology, Trends
The Fintech Book, a paper version of a decent blog. Sticky bookmarks are mine and do not come as standard
The Fintech Book, a paper incarnation of a decent blog. Sticky bookmarks are mine and do not come as standard

The Fintech Book is a crowdsourced compilation of articles from 168 authors. It’s more of reference book for a reader to dip in and out than reading cover to cover.

The articles are a range of medium to long blog posts, often with accompanying graphs or diagrams. The design layout is well presented with a nice orange theme. Every so often there’s a graphic which has been pasted into the book in its original format, which breaks the nice theme.

It would have been nice to have seen some real heavyweight C-level managers from the big banks or financial institutions provide some ‘keynote style’ Fintech posts in the book. Or at least provide a review of the book among the other 21 endorsements on page one as you open the front cover to add some immediate credibility. Authors from Lloyds (twice), PwC and McKinsey have provided articles, and job titles like “Business Analyst” and “Senior Manager” appear regularly in authors’ descriptions. I don’t intend any disrespect to them – perhaps these are the thought leaders in these organisations. Continue reading Book review: The Fintech Book →

Reading list for 12 October 2015

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Kids playing cards
Yes you can play cards on an iPad, but kids don’t enjoy it as much as the real game

In between all these links I’m currently reading LEAN Enterprise – I’ll provide a full review if/ when I manage to finish it.

In the meantime, here are some of the more interesting links I’ve visited over the last week:

Mobile leads first half digital ad surge| warc.com – Ad spend on mobiles increased 51% to £1.08bn during the first half of 2015. Is it a bubble or a natural trend? Continue reading Reading list for 12 October 2015 →

The Insurance Industry and the Need for Innovation

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On stage at ITC 2015, and I look like I'm performing some sort of card trick
On stage at ITC 2015, and I look like I’m performing some sort of card trick

Earlier this week I was on a panel at the ITC (Insurance Technology Congress) 2015 event. My panel was dealing specifically with Internet of Things in the insurance industry.

The event was aimed at CIOs of large, mainly commercial insurance companies. The CTO and CIOs in the room spend their time and budget keeping the lights on – i.e. keeping their systems in tip-top shape.

These CIOs and CTOs are rightly proud of their systems’ stability and availability, and until now innovation is a distant second priority. However, new technologies and technology companies are entering the market, and this conference was a joining of minds to create a plan for the future.

Note: Endava were sponsors of the event, and I was only able to attend the first day of the event. Continue reading The Insurance Industry and the Need for Innovation →

Weekly reading list – August

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Facebook redefined the word friend in 2004
Facebook redefined the word friend in 2004

Fresh back from a summer holiday – well actually mine was a bit of a knackering washout really – here are some recommended web reading links.

I’ve also taken out a 12-week trial subscription to The Economist. Between reading one of the issues and a book at the moment, I can’t keep up. I struggle to reach half way through the magazine before another one arrives.

The quality, depth and opinion of the articles is top-notch. I’m not saying I always agree with the opinion, but the manner it’s conveyed is excellent.

From relationships to revolutions: seven ways Facebook has changed the world – Facebook has changed our lives, and I believe it’s mainly for the better. This article shows 7 key aspects (including mass employment).  Continue reading Weekly reading list – August →

The history of credit cards

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I just found this infographic on the History of Credit Cards from Sainsbury’s .

It’s like it because many of us are wrapped up in the FinTech revolution, and if you start believing your own hype, you’d think cash was invented a million years ago, plastic cards 10,000 years ago and mobile phones last January. Continue reading The history of credit cards →

Reading list for June

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The latest Marketplace Innovation report
The latest Marketplace Innovation report is available on Slideshare

During the last couple of weeks I’ve been working with clients across different industries – a key advantage for these clients, and something I love about my job.

It’s also been London Technology Week – a series of events showcasing you guessed it, Technology in London’s firms, including a great event at Goldman Sachs.

As well as these links I’m midway through reading Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo which is easy to read and proven quite useful so far, although it would score high on the American cheesiness scale.

Here’s what I’ve been reading:

Continue reading Reading list for June →

The Goldman Sachs Headline event at London Technology Week 2015

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The Goldman Sachs Agenda at London Technology Week 2015
The Goldman Sachs Agenda at London Technology Week 2015

You may have seen some publicity recently how a megazillion people in the UK, especially London, all work in the FinTech sector. This publicity stems from some research commissioned by London Technology Week, a series of events taking place in London around FinTech.

The events range the full spectrum of FinTech technologies, and as a result we have clients travelling from the US over to London for LTW (London Technology Week). Most of the events are free, and even the charging ones were under £20.

I’ll be attending a few events with some colleagues going to events which clashed. I’m also speaking at Tuesday’s CSFI round table on crypto-currencies, which I think is just a coincidence that it happens to fall during LTW.

The first event of LTW15, or the headline event as it was known, was at Goldman Sachs called “Goldman Sachs Engineers – Solutions to Complex Problems at Scale”. Here are some brief notes. My apologies for speed over brevity – there will be a lot to cover this week.

Continue reading The Goldman Sachs Headline event at London Technology Week 2015 →

The June CSFI breakfast meeting on Blockchain, fintech and regulation

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View from the CSFI June breakfast meeting at Dentons. Image from Paul on Twitter fred
View from the CSFI June breakfast meeting at Dentons. Image from Paul Parboteeah on Twitter

At the June CSFI breakfast round table we discussed some of the recent technology and market innovations in the Fintech industry. In fact, it wasn’t a round table at all – there were so many attendees that it ended up more like a lecture theatre layout. Credit to the panel for keeping the conversation two-way with the audience.

CSFI round tables are always interesting, and due to the Chatham House rule, I can only report on the main headlines and not who said them.

The key points were Blockchain, fintech, regulation and other innovation. Continue reading The June CSFI breakfast meeting on Blockchain, fintech and regulation →