Global

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.

A three-part series by 11:FS Non-Executive Director, Lisa Gansky Last week Lisa discussed how becoming truly digital requires a leap of faith, to boldly go where no one else has yet gone, even if it seems crazy at the time, and to ignore basic human instinct asking how? where? how long? how far? She outlined the three steps on the journey: The Digital Makeover – ask never ending questions if you want to evolve The Joy of Decoupling – refashioning process and perspective Is That Even Legal? – Innovation that completely redefines norms Read part 1 in full here

65 million years ago, gigantic monster roamed the same places where today Starbucks and Costa Coffees are. Having dragged themselves out of the primordial goo and evolved themselves to the top of the food chain, the Dinosaurs were oversized in their appetites, attitudes and on top of the world. What can the monsters of today learn from the monsters of the past to avoid the extinction events that wiped out the dinosaurs? Let us explore, with Jurassic Park puns and quotes aplenty… hold on to your butts.

In the first of a new series we’re talking to our brilliant 11s to get to know them a little bit more. From the consultants building new digital propositions and the research team using cultural insights to inform them, through to the engineers bringing those services to market, the operations team that keeps the lights on, and everyone else in between.

The talk of disruption of banking by fintech companies has quelled a little recently as realisation sets in as to just how difficult that actually is. The talk now is of partnerships between the two that mutually benefit both parties. We have not really seen many partnerships in the true sense between fintech and the old banks yet, they are still using fintechs in traditional vendor relationships.

As you may have noticed I’ve been doing a lot of teasing around this for the last few months. Well today...right now...is the grand reveal as we celebrate the public launch of our 11:FS values.

I used to hate when my parents came into high school for the annual speech from my teachers that I should be trying a lot harder. Unlike my report cards at school, I think the 11:FS end of year report would read pretty damn well as every single person that has worked for 11:FS couldn’t have done more to make it a success over the last year.

In her latest column for Forbes, 11:FS Head of Research Sarah Kocianski analyses Chime's recent outages and challengers' reliance on third-party processors.