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.

Host David M. Brear, CEO of 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to discuss the biggest stories from the world of financial services over the past week.

In this episode of Fintech Insider Insights, Kate Moody is joined by an expert panel of product leaders to unpack a question every startup and scale-up eventually faces: how do you build the dream product team?
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Host Ross Gallagher, Head of Ventures at 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to discuss the biggest stories from the world of financial services over the past week.
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In this episode of Fintech Insider, David M. Brear sits down with ClearBank’s UK CEO, Emma Hagan, to explore how the UK’s first new clearing bank in over 250 years is reshaping financial infrastructure from the ground up.
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Host Kate Moody, Customer Strategy Director at 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to discuss the biggest stories from the world of financial services over the past week.
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Host Benjamin Ensor, Director of Research and Strategy at 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to discuss the biggest stories from the world of financial services over the past week.
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What’s next for fintech UX in 2026? Ross Gallagher, Head of Consulting at 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to break down six financial services UX predictions from the latest 11:FS Pulse Report, covering the shifts shaping digital banking, customer experience, onboarding, product design, and user research.
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Host Benjamin Ensor, Director of Research and Strategy at 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to discuss the biggest stories from the world of financial services over the past week.
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On this week’s episode, in partnership with Pleo, host Benjamin Ensor is joined by Jeppe Rindom, Co-Founder and CEO of Pleo; Søren Westh Lonning, CFO at Pleo; and Megan Cooper, CEO of Caywood, to explore how the role of finance has evolved over the past decade - and what it will take for finance teams to win the next 10 years.
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Host Kate Moody, Customer Strategy Director at 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to discuss the biggest stories from the world of financial services over the past week.
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On this week’s episode, host David Barton-Grimley is joined by Matt Weaver, Head of Solutions for EMEA at OpenAI, to explore the impact OpenAI is having on the financial services industry - and the meaningful collaborations taking place between the sector and the AI innovation giant.
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Host Laura Watkins, Director of Media & Marketing at 11:FS, is joined by some great guests to discuss the biggest stories from the world of financial services over the past week.

On this week's episode, David M. Brear is joined by some great guests to tack a question on every bank and fintech leader’s mind: is AI redefining consumer-focused banking in 2026?
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In a fresh wave of fintech consolidation and strategic moves, Flutterwave has acquired Mono. JPMorgan has launched its Special Advisory Services initiative to give key clients access to consulting services drawn from the bank’s own practices. PicPay has filed for a U.S. IPO, and Mercury has applied to the OCC for a national bank charter.
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David M. Brear, Group CEO at 11:FS, sits down with two heavyweights in the payments world: Tracy Birdsall, Managing Director and Head of EMEA & APAC, Merchant Services Sales, at J.P. Morgan Payments, and Kristen Morrow-Greven, Vice President and Head of Global Payments at Netflix.

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...

