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It is the nature of finance that, at its core, is risk.

Here at 11:FS we’re big on transparency and letting you know what’s going on in our company. We’ve recently made a huge hire to be our COO and we couldn’t be more excited about it.

I was at a big bank’s conference the other day and was intrigued at how often the subject of cryptocurrencies and bitcoin came up.

Of course, these are our top 3 blogs of 2018. We took a look at the data, talked amongst ourselves about which ones we liked best and came up with the best blogs we’ve put out this year.

Disclaimer: Yes the piece is entirely structured around the lyrics of a Pulp song. Yes, we take requests.

I do not profess to be, as way too many in the tech industry do today, a blockchain guru or subject matter expert. I leave that designation to 11:FS co-founder Simon Taylor. Simon is the MacGyver of the blockchain community. Give him a stapler, a can of Bud Lite, Duct Tape, and a flashlight, and he will somehow concoct a DLT smart contract solution for a client. A solution that can actually be delivered and that addresses a real business case.

Simon Taylor interviewed block.one CEO and CTO Brendan Blumer and Daniel Larimer at Blockchain Live, to find out more about what block.one does and their new project, EOS that achieved $50omillion in fundraising.

In the second quarter of 2017 VC-backed fintechs raised $5.2bn via 251 deals.That brings us to $8bn for the between Q2 2016 and Q2 2017, meaning the industry is well on track to a record breaking year (2015 saw a peak of $14.1bn). If you’ve got a killer idea or you’ve made it to MVP stage, now might be the time to familiarise yourself with the biggest fintech players in the VC world.

One of the biggest challenges when building new digital financial services is creating a winning feature set. Spending categorisation, budgeting tools, carbon footprint-tracking — these features are everywhere in the financial services apps that we use every day.

Sarah Kocianski sits down with the CEO of Oakam, Frederic Nze to talk about financial inclusion, tackling financial exclusion, the alternative to doorstep lending, and the underbanked.Listen to the full interview here or click play below, otherwise read on for a quick take on what was said.

In a beautiful flat on the edge of San Francisco’s sun-kissed Inner Sunset neighbourhood, the inimitable Sam Maule invited a plethora of fintech experts over for dinner. Across two evenings in the run up to our After Dark San Francisco show, Sam serves up chilli, tacos, and foodie fintech insights. You can listen to them here and here. Disclaimer: The food was actually cooked by Ollie Judge, Head of Media at 11:FS.

At 11:FS, we spend a lot of time looking at next-generation mobile trends and technology. Every now and again we come across a product or feature that just blows us away. It can be as simple as a smart integration with another product or as complicated as a whole app that’s powered by bleeding edge technology.

I’ve blogged on some of the themes I’m going to cover below, but the story gets clearer and clearer in my head the more I blog about and talk about it, so this version may be a little clearer than some that have gone before.

TL;DR We’re witnessing political theatre to limit the amount of scams happening in the ICOs and Token bubble in China (and globally), it’s no surprise regulators have reacted. I expect normal service will resume soon(ish) and as ever finding a *good* ICO to invest in is far better than any old ICO will do… PS: This is not investment advice.

“Thank you to the Academy…” Sure. Classic Oscar speech energy.But do you know what hits harder than a polite golf clap from a panel of judges? Winning when your actual customers vote. And that’s what happened at the 2025 British Bank Awards, where 11:FS was named Consultancy of the Year. Again! 2019. 2020. 2021. 2023. And now 2025.