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to have it all, only for you to be handed what all product designers dread - the existing constraints of a rigid and outdated brand playbook.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

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.

On today's episode, David and Nigel were joined by Hiscox's Gareth Wharton and Zurich's Thomas Clayton. We also bring you an awesome interview with the CEO of Lemonade, Daniel Schreiber!

Alexandra Cheung and Charlie Wood join David, Jason and Ross to tackle the week's biggest stories in banking and fintech!

Simon Taylor speaks to Aneesh Varma, CEO and founder of Aire.

On today's episode, Simon and Colin talk about Binance bounties, Traceable Bitcoin and much more! We also bring you an interview with the wonderful Sandra Ro! Her insights were excellent as always.

For International Women's Day, Producer Laura and Sarah Kocianski co-host the news show alongside special guests, Caroline Plumb, CEO of Fluidly, Klarna's Laurel Wolfe and 11:FS' own Veronique Constans.

After celebrating International Women's Day, we bring you a plethora of interviews with leading women in Fintech! We bring you interviews with: -Rachel Kent - Head of Global Financial Institutions Sector, Hogan Lovells -Wendy Jephson - Co-founder & Chief Behavioural Specialist, Nasdaq Sybenetix -Sophie Bialaszewski - Head of Innovation, Lloyds Banking Group -Min Teo - VP of Operations, Yoyo Wallet -Adizah Tejani - Director of Marketing, Token, Inc

Today, Coinbase has got them self in some trouble after allegations that their staff may or may not have 'taken advantage' of Bitcoin Cash being launched on their platform, Mark Carney warns that crypto-assets must face similar regulatory scrutiny as financial markets and UK Shadow Home Secretary Dianne Abbott calls Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme? We also bring you a great interview with non other than Ethereum and Consesys founder Joe Lubin!

On today's episode we were joined by a plethora of insurance wizards to discuss Connected homes. Zurich head of market management Arslan Hannani, Cocoon co-founder Colin Richardson, PolicyCastle co-founder Kristian Feldborg and Fing head of business development Patrizia Cozzoli. How are IOT and data going to change a fragmented retail market with regards to insurance?

In this week's news show we had representation from both sides of the Atlantic as Nina Mohanty, Doug Bobenhouse and Valentina Kristensen joined new host Ross Gallagher in his first rodeo in the hosting seat, and Simon Taylor to discuss the week's biggest stories.

Today we bring you an interview with CEO of BrainTribe Stefan Ebner. BrainTribe aim to create the open source operating system for data, enabling a world of data democracy and mass innovation.

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 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.

In this episode Simon Taylor chairs a round table discussion on financial inclusion, based around Tech City UK's Fintech For All competition, and he's joined by the winner, event sponsors and event organisers.

Simon and Colin discuss the Whitehouse holding off on Bitcoin regulation, Ellen Degeneres explaining Bitcoin, Telegram's ICO money and much, much more. We also bring you an interview with Patrick Berarducci and Matt Corva from Consensys about Brooklyn Project.

In this very special show, we let our sister podcast Blockchain Insider takeover the mics, as Simon Taylor leads a roundtable focusing on blockchain and insurance and the different opportunities and ways of thinking that can be tapped into using smart contracts and DLT, while co-host Colin G Platt interviews Stephan Karpischek, Co-founder of Etherisc, who are building decentralized insurance applications.

In this episode, we bring you our fourth After Dark special, recorded in front of a live audience as Jason and Simon are joined by Niall Cameron, Ross Gallagher, Sarah Kocianski and Valentina Kristensen to discuss the week's biggest and silliest stories.
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.

Fintech Marketing Podcast Season 2: Coming soon

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...

