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I joined the 11:FS media team back in June 2017 - a mere 96 podcast episodes into Fintech Insider’s 500 episode journey. It’s been incredible working on this show and being a part of its growth over the last three and a half years. From its humble beginnings, FI has evolved into something we could never have predicted, and I’m SO proud of it. We’ve grown our audience both internationally and at home thanks to our community of loyal listeners (you know who you are 🙏).

This week we had great news from both sides of the Atlantic, lots of team ups and partnerships plus some of the sillier crypto stories we’ve seen Taking on all of this on the Fintech Insider News show along side host Simon Taylor were Megan Caywood, Chief Platform Officer at Starling; Edward Berks – Director of Banking, Fintech & Ecosystem at Xero, and our very own Ross Gallagher, Principal Consultant in our 11:FS Research Team. Listen here for the episode in full, stream it below or read on for additional insights.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘crypto’? Maybe you were one of the first to jump aboard the crypto train and believe it will be the cornerstone of our financial future, or maybe you think it’s all a sham and run a mile when you hear someone say “bitcoin”.

In an exclusive interview for Fintech Insider, Jason Bates speaks to Chris Woolard, Director of Strategy and Competition at the FCA, all about their recent paper and announcement about their plans to take the regulatory sandbox global.

For Fintech Insider’s news show Jason, Simon and David are joined by 11:FS Research team’s Ross Gallagher, Capco’s Charlie Wood and Fluidly CEO Caroline Plumb, to take on the week’s stories including Brexit, open banking, Robinhood app, and PensionBee’s stand against Aegon. Listen in full here, stream below or read on for highlights.

Guest author Natalia Moose shares her thoughts on how regulation is becoming friendlier towards the cloud following our recent report Why banks should be cloud based in association with nCino.

Some thoughts crossing the mind of our own Simon Taylor; that if you’re interested in the subject of Blockchain you might want to consider:

People have been predicting the death of cash for years. And depending on who you talk to, the future is either just around the corner or will never quite happen. A typical Swedish person (who makes three times the number of card transactions than the average of European) can probably imagine that future. But if you talk to anyone in Germany – a company with a historic affinity to cold hard cash – they might look at you funny.

This week on Fintech Insider News David and Jason were joined by colleagues Pete Townsend and making his Fintech Insider debut, Ross Gallagher, from our Pulse and Research Team, to tackle the latest news from the last week. They were joined by regular guest Sarah Kocianski and Charlie Wood. Listen to the episode in full here or play and read below

I’ve blogged on some of the themes I’m going to cover below, but the story gets clearer and clearer in my head the more I blog about and talk about it, so this version may be a little clearer than some that have gone before.

Should I sell my cryptocurrency? Is all hope lost? Will Bitcoin die? If you were fast asleep, and then suddenly your bed accelerated at high speed, before going upside down and doing loops. You'd be pretty shocked, right? I mean, my dreams can be pretty out there at times but I mean like your actual bed moving like a rollercoaster.

Time to budget for your next beach holiday (or city break if that’s what you’re into). To help, Nationwide’s launched a new ‘Savings Goals’ feature for its mobile banking app. It prompts customers to set a specific financial goal to reach at a particular date. Let’s take a look at this new feature, and see how it compares to Monzo’s ‘Savings Target.’

Fintech Connect 2020 is just around the corner! It’s taking place online from the 30th November to the 4th December, with 8,000 attendees and more than 200 speakers already confirmed.

With the industry evolving rapidly around us, there’s little room for anyone who isn’t able to change at pace. A six month old greenfield codebase will be brown before you know it. You must be able to move quickly.

From dreams of running a five-star hotel to the reality of running a five-star bank, Ashok Vaswani, the CEO of Barclays UK, speaks with Simon Taylor about culture, digital transformation challenges and opportunities, front line staff empowerment and how Simon might be able to buy a Lamborghini in the future.