Global

Banks are having a midlife crisis. Their tech is at that stage where it’s old enough to gather regrets. Lots of them. This is taken from our Unfiltered newsletter. Subscribe now for a no BS, uncensored analysis of fintech news and hot topics delivered to your inbox each fortnight.

Fintechs regularly provide updates on how many customers they have. Motivations for doing so are varied — garnering headlines, proving naysayers wrong, or right, keeping investors happy and so on. More interestingly, they also have a variety of definitions of “customer” that are not always clear.

I think we can all accept that clear customer insight, the right business drivers, market opportunities, etc. should inform great proposition design.

If there’s one region that’s been bookmarked by every 2024 predictions list in terms of innovation and investment, it’s the Middle East. And as the region emerges as a fintech hotspot, its unique commitment to Islamic finance is drawing attention.

Everyone’s got a bike these days, right? How many bikes would you admit to owning? Is your ‘multi-bike’ strategy paying off? Now ask yourself the same questions about your use of cloud.

As financial services continues to ride the digital transformation wave, there is a big problem emerging: recruiting the tech talent required to achieve the scale of change needed.

Brexit, GDPR, robo-regulation, fintech bridges, and envoys. Those were the big topics at the Treasury’s International Fintech Conference (IFTC) this year, held at Tobacco Dock.

This article was originally published in February 2021. In light of a looming cost-of-living crisis, soaring inflation and spiralling interest rates, we feel it’s more relevant now than ever. So, after a bit of tinkering, we’ve republished it. Enjoy.

Markets, from the UK through to Hong Kong and the US, have become highly competitive. With more choice than ever before, how do you make your proposition stand out?

2020 has seen plenty of fintech M&A - LendingClub buying Radius Bank, Intuit acquiring Credit Karma and of course with Visa buying Plaid. You might think the current crisis would reduce activity but it could create more opportunities.

One of the dirty secrets of the fintech and banking community is that everyone thinks that everyone else understands how it all works and that they’re the only one who doesn’t really get it.

11:FS Pulse has brought competitor insights to life. Now we’re going further, involving the entire community to redefine and continually advance what the ‘best’ means in digital financial services.

There’s quite a lot of technical lingo in this Unfiltered. We know that’s not really our style, but we’re talking about some big ideas here. If you’re into crypto and keen to see what else we know, get in touch. This is taken from our Unfiltered newsletter. Subscribe now for a no BS, uncensored analysis of fintech news and hot topics delivered to your inbox each fortnight.

In this guest blog Bailey Kusar, co-founder and CEO of Toucan, examines how open banking can be used to deliver services that better support people with mental health conditions to manage their finances.