Learn about the latest FS trends and news, from industry experts.

There’s a reason counties often refer to their tech hubs as “the Silicon Valley of [insert country name here].” The Bay Area is the proud birthplace of some of the world’s biggest technological triumphs, home to global powerhouses like Apple and Visa. Every year the Valley also attracts a host of fintech start-ups - such as Credit Karma, Chime and Varo Bank, to name a few. But it’s not just California driving the future of financial services. We’ve done our research to see which companies across the 50 states are leading the fintech charge. (Did you miss our first blog? See who’s doing awesome things on the other side of the pond with our list of the hottest European fintechs.)

I speak to a lot of customers about how money fits into their lives. I’ve never come across anyone who said “what I really need is a bank” or more specifically banking products like credit cards or savings accounts. Customers don’t want your products, they want to achieve their goals.People talk about helping their kids go to university or getting the best deal on their mobile phone. Of course, people require money and some kind of financial products to do these things. However, the cold reality for banks is that their commoditised products are not helping customers make progress towards these important jobs in their lives.At 11:FS we help build truly digital next generation digital propositions. Central to this is grounding intelligent digital propositions in customer Jobs To be Done (JTBD).

Back at the end of 2019, we dived into the perfect fintech storm that was brewing in the Middle East. Diversification had already started in the region, but financial inclusion was reluctant to follow. So where are we now? It’s 2020, and things have been hotting up in the region with opportunities continuing to surface. But what does the region hold for fintech and why is the Middle East where the real gold lies?

Cyber attacks are hardly new, so why are banks putting renewed energy into combating them? 11:FS Market Research Analyst Joanne Kumire explains.

Pre-COVID, you could’ve called me a globe-trotter. And you wouldn’t have been wrong. As an author, commentator and public speaker, I’m rarely in one place for too long. So getting used to working from home for the past six months has been a revelation, to say the least. In light of World Mental Health Day 2020 (arguably the most important one yet) I thought I’d share some of the observations I’ve made since being thrust into 24/7 remote working. While some of them might be trivial, it’s fair to say I’ve experienced a rollercoaster of emotions. Mental health isn’t a static creature, and it’s bound to fluctuate thanks to the blows we’ve been dealt by the pandemic - I’m sure you can relate.

This is the final instalment of a 6 part series that explores the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) for US SMBs that we identified in our recent research. Each blog post dives into one of the jobs and how we examined it with a JTBD canvas. If you missed the first post that explains JTBD and the canvas, check it out before reading this.

It's a truism that the hardest job in engineering is that of 'Tech Lead'. You're the person who's not only writing code, but simultaneously leading a small group of other engineers and spending large amounts of time talking to stakeholders and the Product Manager (or, ten years ago, *Project* Manager). 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.

London’s been at the centre of the fintech bubble for over a decade now, and the rest of Europe isn’t far behind. One of the few silver linings of the coronavirus pandemic could be that it might act as a catalyst for a tonne of investment into fintech, as more and more people recognise the need to go digital. Despite the trend for falling investments in 2020, the UK fintech sector is still looking flush thanks to investments of over $1.84 billion. To give you a heads up on the next big companies on the scene, we’ve rounded up the hottest startups on our watch list 🔥

As we roll into 2018 thoughts inevitably turn to the big themes that we might expect (and hope) to see for user experience in the financial services industry this year.

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is a theory. Its main aim is to explain why customers start - and stop - using different products and services in the market. Stripped down to the essentials, it’s a fairly straightforward concept first introduced by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen that can be adapted into a useful tool for product development.

There’s been a huge leak of files from FinCEN, the US-based Financial Crime Enforcement Network. Over 2000 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and hundreds of other documents appear to show how banks have been unable to prevent trillions in money laundering, tax avoidance and criminality over the past decade. But there's a more in-depth story to uncover here.

David M. Brear interviewed Jonathan Larsen, CIO, Ping An and CEO of their Global Voyager Fund, a $1bn investment fund, specifically for fintech. He tells David all about the fund and the innovations in fintech coming from China and making a huge impact worldwide.

Guest author Richard Davies shares his reflections as he transitions from his role as Revolut’s COO to Non Exec at Revolut, and CEO of Allica Bank. As fuel for the future he looks at his learnings from Revolut as well as his wider experiences and inspirations over the last decade in financial services and fintech.

Good working culture is impossible without motivation. Therefore, it is essential to follow a model of organisation design that supports the conditions in which motivation can be maximised.

At 11:FS, we build digital financial services, primarily banks. ‘Bank’ is a very broad term, of course, and our focus on client needs and ‘Jobs To Be Done’ approach (“People don’t want a mortgage, they want to buy a house”), means that we rarely set out to build a pure bank.