Global

As a designer, it’s an all too familiar scenario: you’re about to undertake work on an exciting new digital product or service. It has the potential to have it all, only for you to be handed what all product designers dread - the existing constraints of a rigid and outdated brand playbook. It can certainly feel like a crushing blow. But approached in the correct manner, these constraints can be transformed into an opportunity to take both the product and the brand to the next level.

Digital Banking is only 1% Finished. That’s our motto at 11:FS. You can see it plastered across everything we do, we talk about it at events, and it’s in all of our client work. Taking a paper statement to the telephone, to a website and then a mobile app isn’t where digital banking ends; it’s where it begins. Digital Banking having 99% to go is a statement of optimism, of opportunity and its how you differentiate, as consumer expectations will only grow in the coming years.

On 1st August at approximately 12:20 UTC, the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin formally began a process to fork – or split into two- creating Bitcoin Cash, a new currency. It is unclear exactly what the implications of this will be in the long term but here’s a summary of what we know so far:

It’s about trust. Why do banks insist on having everything? Because they think if they only insist on some, they’ll never get the rest.

Fintech is technology used in the financial services industry, insurtech is technology used in a subset of that industry, insurance. And yet while one is typically considered fascinating, worthy of pages of mainstream media coverage, mention of the other is often greeted with eye-rolling outside of specialist circles.

Sam Maule joins 11:FS as Managing Partner, Americas

This week I had the super-smart Mariano Belinky tell me that the current crop of challenger banks are really just ‘better mousetraps’.

A few weeks ago, I outlined the problems with the financial products that supposedly address small and medium sized businesses’ (SMBs) needs, and how they are chronically underserved by incumbent financial institutions (FIs) across all sectors. Since then, we’ve explored how things are changing in the SMB insurance space and delved into the developments in the areas of bank account opening, payments and loans in our podcasts. I’ve also been busy trying to discover, articulate and demonstrate what “best in class” in this industry looks like in my latest research report.

At 11:FS we like to say that digital banking is 1% finished, well the same is true of Open Banking. The unknown potential of the regulation far outstrips what is being done right now. And that potential has caught the imagination of foreign regulators.

Dave Bruno, Co-Founder at YNOME and Head of WM Innovation at UBS, explains how digital can scale wealth management for everyone.

The last few weeks have shone the spotlight on leadership teams at banks and how they have responded to the unprecedented circumstances created by a global pandemic.

Jason Bates interviewed Stephen Barclay, MP – the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, for Fintech Insider Interviews to gauge his views on the UK fintech scene, and the government’s role in facilitating the rise of fintech, how fintech can help the government, what the impact of Brexit will be and the Treasury’s message to the rest of the world.

A three-part series by 11:FS Non-Executive Director, Lisa Gansky Last week Lisa discussed how to become truly digital you must take a leap of faith, ask questions, make a mess and ultimately shake up business models completely. True transformation must fully pervade an organisation’s culture; it must be far more than just a project. Read part 2 in full here

The first few weeks of 2017 bombarded us with articles predicting the future of FinTech and financial services. Chris Skinner, our Non-Executive Director at 11:FS, analysed them all and identified the top 11 trends that the leading banking and FinTech experts agree we should be following now.

If you are an SME, the chances are you have been seriously neglected by your bank. Your accounting software or Excel spreadsheets are probably your only go to points to understand the state of your business. Your invoice management is likely to be scatty at best, and cash flow optimization is probably not something available in a few clicks. Oh, and it probably took you a couple weeks to actually apply and get your bank account.