How are banks and fintechs planning for a digital future.

2017 is drawing to a close, it’s been an amazing year for fintech and banking, there’s been so many changes, new companies, products, services and innovation across the industry. For a full rundown of the best (and worst) stories from 2017, listen to our After Dark Christmas Special where we recap the whole year. However, as 2018 is fast approaching, we’re looking ahead and getting some predictions in for the next year. We asked the 11:FS co-founders and team and our Fintech Insider News community what they thought would be the big themes of 2018. The biggest topics were as follows:

After a decade of intense innovation, the mood across global financial services has turned sharply. Optimism has given way to fear and long-term ambition has been shelved for short-term survival.

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There is a popular belief that you have to 'make it real' as quickly as possible – “come on, just f*****g build the thing - it's the only way to learn!”. In many scenarios this belief is a dangerous myth, and here's why...

After a busy year in crypto, 11:FS co-founder Simon Taylor checks in on his 2019 predictions to see what he got right and what he missed.

We’re all busier than ever. Not even the most efficient human can cope with the trials we all face and the tasks we all have to do on a daily basis. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. This is taken from our Unfiltered newsletter. Subscribe now for a no BS, uncensored analysis of fintech news and hot topics delivered to your inbox each fortnight.

Do you remember when you first saw a newspaper app on an iPad? It was as though a physical newspaper had been trapped under the black glass. There was even a page turning animation that you probably showed your friends. It was magical. It was digitised news. Ditto for buying albums on iTunes and ordering a traditional taxi; amazing experiences, but we just took what had come before and translated it directly to the new medium.

Africa is the most worthy market for mainstream adoption of decentralised finance. Why? I could go on and on about the underbanked, underserved populations and fragmented remittance ecosystem - while that’s all valid, the biggest pain point in my mind is currency devaluation. Volatile currencies make it difficult for Africans’ savings to hold their value. Solving for currency devaluation will provide the beachhead for the adoption of Decentralised Finance (DeFi) across Africa.

The last episode of Under The Hood, the podcast series with 11:FS that took a deep dive into the banking infrastructure that is disrupting traditional banking models and shaking up the system, has been released. And looking back, I realise how many great conversations we’ve had.

There’s a lot going on right now on personal, business and industry levels. But as I sit here in my home office over the last month talking to senior people in financial services, fintech founders and project teams all over the world, one thing keeps returning to me: “See, we didn’t need more strategy”.

In today's globalized business environment, the discussion around offering alternative payment methods (APMs) to end users continues to grow. APMs can provide businesses with improved cost efficiency, better user experience, broader access to various user segments, and thus increased conversion rates. However, it is essential to carefully consider the challenges and potential drawbacks that come with adopting APMs before fully embracing them.

Dutch directness, failing fast and innovating endlessly are the three common themes in the interview Simon did with Benoit Legrand, CIO of ING. And they’re what drives his approach to delivering success at ING.

With remote working now the norm for most of us, the need to prioritise is more important than ever.

Good content is so important now more than ever, especially for B2B content creators. In a saturated market only good content stands out - or bad but usually for the wrong reasons, and mediocre content just doesn’t get traction at all.

In a recent episode of our Insurtech Insider podcast, Nigel Walsh and John Bean sat down with some fantastic guests to chat about the good, the bad and the ugly. No, not the seminal spaghetti Western with the Ennio Morricone score.