
Building societies are ubiquitous in the UK with 43 currently operating across the country. They are however, often conflated with banks. The key difference between building societies and banks though, is a big one: a building society is owned entirely by its members rather than shareholders, to whom they pay dividends every year.

“Money is a matter of functions four: a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.”But, money is also a form of communication. Money has the power to communicate success, shame, inadequacy, desire, isolation, disdain, greed, support, addiction and resentment. Talking money is also one of society’s greatest taboos. Femtech has had to tackle its own set of taboo topics, so in the spirit of International Women’s Day I’m looking at a thing or two fintech could learn from femtech. 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.

Customer-centricity is a phrase that’s been used and abused over the last decade. But what does it mean in practice and how can Jobs to be Done make it happen?

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.

I’ve worked in fintech for 10+ years now, since before it was a popular term, and long enough to see multiple hype cycles come and go. One of the more enduring fintech themes in that time has been “financial education” and, more recently, “financial health”. These are linked but there are some important conceptual differences! 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.

SMBs are the lifeblood of most economies. In the UK alone they make up 99.9% of all private sector businesses and employ 60% of all private sector workers. Yet they are chronically underserved by incumbent financial institutions (FIs) across all segments.

The third episode of our brand-new video series, Decoding: Banking as a Service, is here! If you missed it (or any of the others) catch up here. Here’s a rundown of this episode if you prefer reading to watching 📖

Financial services brands are still fundamentally irrelevant for many of the most important moments of our life. But why is this? 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 2022! And we’ve got a sneaking suspicion this year is gonna be one to remember.

Arguably the biggest story right now is the announcement of Stripe Capital’s new end-to-end lending API for platforms to offer financing options to their SMB customers. (Simon Taylor wrote a great piece on this at the weekend.) 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.

The fourth episode of our brand-new video series, Decoding: Banking as a Service, is here! If you missed it (or any of the others) catch up here. Here’s a rundown of this episode if you prefer reading to watching 📖

Hopefully, by now you’ve had a chance to digest some, if not all, of our inclusive design series.

This is the final instalment of a 6 part series that explores the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) for US SMBs that we identified in our recent research. Each blog post dives into one of the jobs and how we examined it with a JTBD canvas. If you missed the first post that explains JTBD and the canvas, check it out before reading this.

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is a theory. Its main aim is to explain why customers start - and stop - using different products and services in the market. Stripped down to the essentials, it’s a fairly straightforward concept first introduced by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen that can be adapted into a useful tool for product development.

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.

In this second episode on our deep dive into the creator economy in the US, David Barton-Grimley and is joined by not one, but two fantastic guests, the Co-CEOs of Karat Financial to discuss how financial services can better understand creators and how financial education is the key.

Ross Gallagher is joined by some great guests to talk about how fintech and financial services are meeting the needs of Gens Alpha and Beta, and how they are adapting to the needs of tomorrow's wealth makers.

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.

In this classic Focus episode, David M. Brear is joined by some great guests, from Visa and Capway, to really dig into the keys to successful financial inclusion in America.

David Barton-Grimley is joined by some great guests to unpack the six characteristics of digital commercial banking; real-time, standardised, automated, embedded, contextual, and extendable. We’ll explore what they are and how they can (or can’t) support a more efficient, reliable, and secure industry.

11:FS CEO David M. Brear and Visa's Sophie Schulman are joined by some great guests to look at how fintech can support and shape the US creator economy.

David Brear is joined by a panel of experts from Cleo, Feedzai and Starling Bank to look at how financial services need to adapt to the changes brought by AI, where it can have the most influence and where the human touch is still needed.

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.

PayPal launches stablecoin, Apple announces $10 billion in deposits, and Drake launches Shopify mansion – Kate Moody and Ross Gallagher are joined by some great guests, from Fiat Republic and Knot API, 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, Chipper Cash, and DJAMO, to discuss the evolution and further potential of mobile money in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Benjamin Ensor is joined by some great guests, from 11:FS, Innovate Finance, and TwentyOne to talk about the biggest lessons for financial services in the first half of 2023.

Kate Moody is joined by some great guests, from 11:FS, Nationwide, and Plum, to discuss how banks and fintechs can shape how customers manager their finances.

Benjamin Ensor is joined by some great guests, from Atom Bank, Coastal Community Bank, and Vexi to talk about the value of trust to financial services.

11:FS CEO David M. Brear takes to the lightboard to give us the full run-down, with examples of companies that are leading the way.
Just what is going on with Buy Now, Pay Later right now?

There are one billion people globally who can't prove their identity. That's a big problem for accessing financial services.
It's not just a buzzword.

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...

