
The One to Watch award is given to the company with the firmest foundations onto which it can build truly digital services in the next 12 months.

I’ve poked fun at banks and fintechs, but now it’s time to take on the consultancies. Sometimes it can feel like you’re spending your money on bad advice and worse decisions. Sometimes you are.

Last week I spoke to friends of 11:FS to discover the 11 stupidest things banks do. It was more popular than any of us expected. It even compelled 11:FS Co-Founder, Simon Taylor to write a love letter to the big banks telling them how they can do better. Here at 11:FS we felt like maybe we’d been a little harsh on our incumbent friends. So, I decided to write another list, reaching out to both the wider fintech community and all our followers to find out the 11 stupidest things fintechs say and do.

Here at 11:FS we talk a lot about how Digital Banking is only 1% Finished, jobs to be done, and many other topics on how big banks get things wrong. But sometimes just hearing the theory isn’t enough. So I spoke to bankers, insiders, fintechers, associates, customers, and researchers – all anonymously – who have given me swathes of real world examples of the stupid shit banks do. Here’s the 11 best…or worst, depending on how you want to see it. This list took a fair while to compile so if you’ve got something you want to add send me a message and maybe we’ll do a part two.

Every Thursday, Leda Glyptis, 11:FS Chief of Staff creates #LedaWrites. This week she returns to her adventures in the land of appalling customer care.

When the World Bank launched a focus on financial inclusion in 2011, about 2.5-3 billion people lacked access to even the most basic financial services. Since then, dramatic progress has been made. Between 2011 and 2014 an astonishing 700 million people gained bank accounts (twice the population of the US). In the latest World Bank Findex report, it was stated that a further 8% of the world opened an account.

David Brear and Jason Bates were put through their paces when they met Gary Vaynerchuk who gave them one of his famous $100,000 sessions.

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.

Benjamin Ensor is joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: HSBC launch money transfer app Zing, Pave Bank launches, and the UK and Switzerland sign the Berne Financial Agreement.

Happy New Year Fin-techers! To celebrate, hosts David M. Brear, Ross Gallagher and Kate Moody make some bold fintech predictions for 2024, and look back on how right (or wrong) they were last year!

We look back to a conversation David Brear had with a panel of expert guests to discuss the future of fintech in Australia.

David M. Brear is joined by financial services veteran, Ashok Vaswani, to discuss how he draws on his experience going forward and why he continues to put learning first.

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests to take a closer look at that tricky balance between managing regulation without compromising innovation in financial services.

L.F.G. Today we bring you our 200th episode!! For this very special landmark we will be taking a look at the future of bitcoin; the developments on the Lightning Network; and the impact building on the bitcoin infrastructure will have for the future of cryptocurrency and how we interact with it. All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

Ross Gallagher is joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Crowdcube acquires Semper, Adyen and Plaid team up in the US, OakNorth move into business banking, and N26 pulls out of Brazil.

Kate Moody is joined by some great guests to talk about how climate change is impacting fintechs, and how fintechs are supporting other businesses to achieve their climate goals.

David Barton-Grimley and Kate Moody are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: A joint venture from the biggest US banks launch digital wallet Paze, Atom Bank raise £100m in equity funding, Railsr are making a comeback, and Deutsche are closing nearly half of their branches.

Benjamin Ensor and Kate Moody are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: former J.P. Morgan exec launches Refund-as-a-Service TodayPay, and Airwallex continue expansion into LATAM.

11:FS CEO David M. Brear and Deputy CEO Jason Bates come together to discuss concept of fast following. Is it always a bad thing? How can you get it right, what pitfalls to avoid getting it wrong and what is the impact on the end customer?

Our expert host Ross Gallagher and co-host Rachel Pandyan are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Goldman Sachs stepping back from consumer lending, Galileo's new BNPL offering to SMBs, and a Citibank worker who paid the price for a dodgy expenses claim.

David M. Brear, CEO at 11:FS, is joined by our very own CTO Ewan Silver for a fireside chat to unpick what we mean when we say the services have fallen out of financial services.

Ross Gallagher is joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Apple launch open banking service in the UK, Revolut move closer to a banking licence, and Saga launch a savings platform for the over 50s.
Regulation is essential. It stops banks from going bust or behaving badly.
Lending has been around for thousands of years and is one of the cornerstones of banking.
Mastercard and Visa are the two biggest credit card networks in the world.
We kick off our Decoding: Banks series with a look at the banking landscape today and how we got here.

David M. Brear, our 11:FS CEO, takes us through legacy technology within banks - but of course, with a really cool Lightboard.

There are one billion people globally who can't prove their identity. That's a big problem for accessing financial services.
Inclusive design is a mindset and a process that suggests that you should bring as many people as possible - and the most diverse of voices that you can - into your product design product process, so that you're being truly inclusive. It's designing with people rather that just at them. Charlotte Fereday, Product Director, Ventures, explains what inclusive design is, why it's important, how you can design more inclusively, and answers - how possible is truly inclusive design?
On this episode of Spotlight, 11:FS Crypto Global Strategy Director, Mauricio Magaldi is joined by Ramp Network Co-Founder and CEO, Szymon Sypniewicz. In today's chat, the pair discuss Szymon's career, the current regulatory landscape in crypto, and what the future might hold when it comes to widespread crypto adoption.

The UK banking battlefield has never been more competitive. Customers expectfinancial apps that are personalised, seamless, and that genuinely make a differenc...


The UK banking battlefield has never been more competitive. Customers expectfinancial apps that are personalised, seamless, and that genuinely make a differenc...

