
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.

With consumers becoming increasingly conscious of the impact of their lives, and financial services providers, on the environment, how can retail banks look to react to this trend?

Nearly a year ago now (how time flies during a global pandemic) we wrote that there’s never been a more important time to be truly digital. Little did we know that this would ring truer today than it did then!

As 2019 winds down, we’re doing something a little different for this year and reviewing our best and most popular podcast episodes.

Like everyone else locked down here in the UK, I’ve been working my way through Netflix at an unrelenting pace... 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.

It’s not often that we see regulation pre-empting innovation – rarer still to see it drive innovation forward.

Laura Watkins is joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Adyen get a UK banking licence, Perfios eye UK & US expansion, and a new campaign tackles the gender investment gap.

What is the best metric for measuring the success for fintech? In this rewind show from the archives, Benjamin Ensor is discussing the answer to that question, joined by some great guests, from Allica Bank, Anthemis, and This Week In Fintech.

Klarna rebuts misconceptions about their business model as losses narrow, more than one in eight bank branches are expected to close this year, Airwallex and Public team up for a new investment platform, and Switzerland want to impose the highest ALM standards in Europe. Kate Moody is joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including Alia Mahmud from ComplyAdvantage, The Financial Times' Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, and Dann Bibas from Public.com.

David Brear is joined by some great guests from Fireblocks, DigitalX and Moniflo to talk about how financial services are actually using blockchain technology and how they choose an option that works best for them.

Kate Moody is joined by some great guests, from 11:FS, ClearEstate, and PensionBee, to look at the financial services aimed at customers over 60.

David M. Brear and Jason Bates are joined by some great guests, from Milli, to bring you this deep-dive into setting up a new banking proposition in the USA!

Shopify launches credit card, HSBC and Tradeshift launch joint embedded finance venture, and Snoop gets acquired – Ross Gallagher and David Barton-Grimley are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days.

David M. Brear is joined by Standard Chartered CEO, Bill Winters, in this interview deep-diving into innovation in the banking space!

In this second episode on our monthly topic, David Barton-Grimley is joined by a fantastic guest, from QED Investors, to look at the roles and responsibilities of US VCs in the current market.

Investment platform Public launches in the UK, Solaris raises to focus on core values, and Martin Lewis 'sickened' by deepfake investment scam – Kate Moody is joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days!

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests from Visa, Mana Tech, and Commerce Ventures, to discuss the opportunities and challenges in the fintech market in the United States of America.

a16z to open first international office in London, HSBC builds innovation division from the bones of SVB UK, and Snoop Dogg launches NFT tour pass – Ross Gallagher and Benjamin Ensor are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days.

David M. Brear is joined by Anne Boden, CEO of Starling, in this interview from the archives!

Ross Gallagher is joined an all-star panel of Elevens for the first part of a two episode deep-dive into the battle scars picked up when building banks across the globe.

Smart raises $95 million to take on the pension market, Robinhood launches 24-hour trading, and former UK Chancellor to chair Italian investment firm – Benjamin Ensor and Kate Moody are joined by some great guests, from Anthemis and Smart, to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days.
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...

