
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.
David Brear is joined by Lotanna Ezeike, Co-Founder and CEO at XPO, in this bonus episode to bust some myths about social media influencers, and challenge David's opinions from a few episodes back. Tune in to find out more!

Simon Taylor and Ross Gallagher are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: The FinCEN file leak, Tink continues path to European domination, and NationWide claps back again racism.

Sam Maule is joined by some fantastic guests from across Latin America to talk about development, growth and impact of fintechs in the region.

Jason Bates and David Brear are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Alibaba invest 3 BILLION in Grab, Klarna reaches an $11Bn valuation, and Microsoft dig up a data centre they buried underwater off the coast of Scotland 2 years ago.

David Brear is joined by some fantastic experts from IBM to discuss the opportunities that public cloud offer for business transformation in financial services.

Sam Maule and Sarah Kocianski are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: RTGS Global rolls out stage 1 of liquidity visibility network in collab with Microsoft, banks work with fintechs to counter ‘deepfake’ fraud, and Paypal terminates accounts linked to a Russian influence operation.

Simon Tayor is joined by some special guests to talk about the growth cryptocurrencies in mainstream finance.

Sarah Kocianski and Nigel Walsh are joined by some amazing guests to talk through digital transformation in the insurance industry.

David Brear and Mel Stringer are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: More raises as Chip launches Series A, Paypal is coming for Klarna and AfterPay, and Goldman Sachs launches its own font: Goldman Sans.

Simon Taylor is joined by some great guests to talk about the growth and impact of banking as a service on financial services in the US. This week we're joined by Railsbank, Marqueta and Synapse.

Sarah Kocianski and Jason Bates are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: Railsbank in talks to buy Wirecard UK, JPMorgan to [possibly] launch a UK digital challenger bank by 2021 and the UK's 800% surge of open banking payments during lockdown. All this and much more on today's show.

This week we bring you our first-ever, Truly Digital After Dark! In the sound of the times, we have not only turned our fantastic After Dark show Truly Digital, but we also bring you insights as to how digital is currently shaping the financial industries!

Sarah Kocianski and Nigel Walsh are joined by a panel of guests to talk through the latest news in the insurance and insurtech space!

Simon Taylor and David Brear are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days, including: fintech funding as Robinhood’s valuation grows… again! In the UK Form3 and Habito get funding and BCR Pool E is awarded, and Citi accidentally Paid $900M Paid In Error to Revlon and now they want it back. All this and much more on today's show

Sam Maule and Sarah Kocianski are joined by some great guests to talk about some of the most interesting stories of the last 7 days in US financial services and beyond including: Facebook rolls out its Facebook Financial Initiative; AmEx in talks to buy Kabbage and Robinhood blows past rivals in day trades, and much much more!
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...

