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When I see headlines about “hipster” banks and “trendy” cards, it strikes me that the narrative is missing a huge shift about the consumer. Ethical is the new luxury. Private is the new showy. Transparent is the new trusted.

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say - homework is crap. Evenings after school are for watching Takeshi’s Castle, not studying Pythagoras’ theorem.

As part of the editorial process for Fintech Insider we review a lot of stories and see how media outlets report on challenger banks. Some recent pieces had the distinct feel of unhappy incumbent bankers lobbying hard to change the narrative.

Banks are having a midlife crisis. Their tech is at that stage where it’s old enough to gather regrets. Lots of them. 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.

Fintechs regularly provide updates on how many customers they have. Motivations for doing so are varied — garnering headlines, proving naysayers wrong, or right, keeping investors happy and so on. More interestingly, they also have a variety of definitions of “customer” that are not always clear.

Everyone’s got a bike these days, right? How many bikes would you admit to owning? Is your ‘multi-bike’ strategy paying off? Now ask yourself the same questions about your use of cloud.

Brexit, GDPR, robo-regulation, fintech bridges, and envoys. Those were the big topics at the Treasury’s International Fintech Conference (IFTC) this year, held at Tobacco Dock.

This article was originally published in February 2021. In light of a looming cost-of-living crisis, soaring inflation and spiralling interest rates, we feel it’s more relevant now than ever. So, after a bit of tinkering, we’ve republished it. Enjoy.

2020 has seen plenty of fintech M&A - LendingClub buying Radius Bank, Intuit acquiring Credit Karma and of course with Visa buying Plaid. You might think the current crisis would reduce activity but it could create more opportunities.

11:FS Pulse has brought competitor insights to life. Now we’re going further, involving the entire community to redefine and continually advance what the ‘best’ means in digital financial services.

The digital banking scene in Southeast Asia is hot right now. Over the past two years, it’s experienced some rapid changes. Changing regulations have triggered a mass of new players entering the market.

There’s quite a lot of technical lingo in this Unfiltered. We know that’s not really our style, but we’re talking about some big ideas here. If you’re into crypto and keen to see what else we know, get in touch. 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.

Working with agencies can sometimes feel like you spend weeks or even months covering ground that you already know before you start seeing value.

If you’re building a fintech or adding financial services to an existing platform, there’s no doubt that the concept of embedded finance with white-label solutions has passed you by.