
One of the biggest challenges when building new digital financial services is creating a winning feature set. Spending categorisation, budgeting tools, carbon footprint-tracking — these features are everywhere in the financial services apps that we use every day.

Sarah Kocianski sits down with the CEO of Oakam, Frederic Nze to talk about financial inclusion, tackling financial exclusion, the alternative to doorstep lending, and the underbanked.Listen to the full interview here or click play below, otherwise read on for a quick take on what was said.

In a beautiful flat on the edge of San Francisco’s sun-kissed Inner Sunset neighbourhood, the inimitable Sam Maule invited a plethora of fintech experts over for dinner. Across two evenings in the run up to our After Dark San Francisco show, Sam serves up chilli, tacos, and foodie fintech insights. You can listen to them here and here. Disclaimer: The food was actually cooked by Ollie Judge, Head of Media at 11:FS.

At 11:FS, we spend a lot of time looking at next-generation mobile trends and technology. Every now and again we come across a product or feature that just blows us away. It can be as simple as a smart integration with another product or as complicated as a whole app that’s powered by bleeding edge technology.

“Thank you to the Academy…” Sure. Classic Oscar speech energy.But do you know what hits harder than a polite golf clap from a panel of judges? Winning when your actual customers vote. And that’s what happened at the 2025 British Bank Awards, where 11:FS was named Consultancy of the Year. Again! 2019. 2020. 2021. 2023. And now 2025.

In her latest column for Forbes, 11:FS Head of Research Sarah Kocianski examines the new set of authentication procedures and how they are being implemented by UK banks.

11:FS are pleased to announce that Lisa Gansky joined us as a Non-Executive Director, on 3rd July 2017.

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to have it all, only for you to be handed what all product designers dread - the existing constraints of a rigid and outdated brand playbook.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.

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests, from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, GB Bank, FINTRAIL, to discuss how to tackle financial crime and money laundering going forward.

EL. EF. GEE. Today we bring you: UK Minister proposes measures to regulate crypto ads and ban unauthorised providers, Reddit now has more NFT wallets than the OpenSea Marketplace, and Blockchain.com Visa Card, powered by Marqeta, debuts with 50,000 sign-ups at launch. All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests, from Atomic, Alloy, and Taxbit, to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services from Money20/20 in Las Vegas, including: Wells Fargo partners with Google on a virtual assistant, Fireblocks launches digital assets payments engine, and our panel gives their personal highlights from the conference.

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests, from Moov, Catch, and Plaid, at Money20/20 in Last Vegas to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of payments in America.

Ross Gallagher and Benjamin Ensor are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: wIll Goldman Sachs pull the plug on Marcus? PayPal backs away from fining people $2,500 for 'misinformation', and Damien Hirst burns artworks after collectors pick their NFTs instead.

Ross Gallagher is joined by some great guests, from Pensionbee, Wealthify and Common Wealth, to discuss what makes the perfect pension offering.

Kate Moody is joined by some great guests, from Tink, HSBC, and Chetwood Financial, to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Mumsnet teams up with Chetwood to launch family-focused financial products in 2023, HSBC teams up with Oracle Netsuite for Embedded Banking Services in the US, and SEC charges Kim Kardashian for Instagram crypto promotion.

Benjamin Ensor and David M. Brear are joined by a panel of guests from Bright Blue Hare and Swiss Re Solutions to talk through what open insurance could look like. All this and much, much more on today's Insurtech Insider!

Benjamin Ensor and Ross Gallagher are joined by some great guests to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: UK mortgage lenders halt some deals after pound falls, DoorDash partners with JP Morgan Chase on credit card, and we dive into the Fintech Insider mailbag!

David M. Brear is joined by some great guests, from 11:FS and Nucoro, to discuss designing financial services for high-net-worth individuals.

We. Are. Here. Today we bring you: a show dedicated to developers and their worlds. We take a look at what a dev actually does and how to break into their world, what opportunities are out there, and how important dev communities really are. All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

Benjamin Ensor is joined by some great guests, from Zayzoon and PayMeNow, to discuss the earned wage access industry.

Benjamin Ensor is joined by some great guests, from Tech Nation, F10 and OakNorth, to explore the impact of tech accelerators on the fintech space.

EL. EF. GEE. Today we bring you: Latin American crypto firm Ripio launches prepaid crypto card in Brazil, Steven Bartlett’s web3 creator platform Thirdweb raises £20m, and Netflix enters Decentraland metaverse promoted by Ryan Gosling. All this and much more on today's Blockchain Insider!

Kate Moody and Benjamin Ensor are joined by some great guests, from Betakit and Silicon Republic, to talk about the most interesting stories in financial services over the last 7 days, including: Shopify is picking a fight with Amazon, UBS scraps $1.4 billion deal to buy Wealthfront, and Japan decides it's time to stop using floppy disks.

Hey, banks! This might sting a bit. You’re getting loyalty all wrong - and it’s costing you customers. But all is not lost!
The entire world is buzzing about AI, and that ain't changing anytime soon. But as AI becomes more integrated into our daily lives, what impact will it have on financial services and how people interact with them?
Ever wanted to know what’s going on behind the scenes every time we make a payment?
Regulation is essential. It stops banks from going bust or behaving badly.
The invention of the computer revolutionised banking in the 1950s.
Lending has been around for thousands of years and is one of the cornerstones of banking.
They're down, but they're not certainly not out.
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.

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...

