“Building upon the financial technology themes from his previous books, Chris takes you on an intellectual journey as he methodically thinks through where technology will take us, humans, next. He imagines a new, open banking and financial services system tailored for each one of us. He describes how financial inclusion drives innovation, and how it will change financial services as billions of people join the system. I greatly enjoyed this rare and refreshing optimistic vision in which money is implicit, the invisible digital fabric of the internet connecting new platforms and existing companies."
Konstantin Peric,
Deputy Director, Financial Services for the Poor,
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
“Chris' latest book is a tour-de-force that provides a broad sweep of the incredible changes that are impacting our industry—open banking, platforms, APIs and machine learning, to name a few. However, it is his articulate postulation that ‘few banks are changing, and if they don't change they will not survive’ that makes this book a must-read for anyone in the financial services industry. And his thoughts on the very basis of value in our economy, and how this could evolve in the fourth revolution, make this a great read for the rest of us!"
Piyush Gupta,
CEO, DBS
“Skinner presents a compelling vision of the future of financial services expertly set in 10,000 years of historical context."
Jesse McWaters,
Project Lead, Disruptive Innovation in Financial Services,
World Economic Forum
“In Digital Human, Chris Skinner challenges our notion of what it will mean to be human and the role that money and finance will play. With this follow-up to Digital Bank, Skinner paints a picture of humanity's digital future, and the future is bright. As he describes, with 7.5 billion people connected in real time through mobile technology, increased access and transparency have the potential to finally tear down the walls of financial exclusion.”
David Cotney,
Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Banks;
Board Member, Cross River
“Digital revolution creates the fourth age of humanity, where everyone is connected and included. For the very first time, we have a chance to reach and serve a financial transaction to everyone. As one of the world's most followed voices on FinTech, Chris Skinner provides a survival guide for the financial services industry and the opportunities therein."
Dr. Soner Canko,
CEO, BKM
“At the risk of sounding repetitive, Digital Human is yet another must-read book from Chris Skinner. Banks, bankers and ‘control freak cultures’ everywhere take heed: if you don't yet understand how your roles will diminish in the coming years, this book will make it frighteningly clear."
Dan Dickinson,
Chief Digital Officer, Equitable Bank
“Chris has a sharp eye for industry trends and cuts through a lot of noise with actionable insights, while shedding light on the alarming fact that the majority of banks' IT budget goes to maintenance rather than innovation. If the industry dares to follow Chris' proposed solutions—focusing on partnerships, technology outsourcing and increased collaboration—we would see an unleashing of energy and innovation to the benefit of clients and society at large. As he puts it nicely: ‘If banks are average in doing 1000 things, are cemented to their past and are not agile enough to update daily and refresh their core regularly, they will be outsmarted by those who can. And those who can will recognise that banks are doing 1000 things mediocrely—and will naturally come together to do 1000 things brilliantly.’"
Kim Fournais,
CEO and Founder, Saxo Bank
“Chris Skinner has the remarkable ability to distil complex issues to their simplest form, which results in a book that can be easily digested. Digital Human evolves as a one-on-one conversation, as Chris describes how technology has become the equaliser in our global society. His vast experience evaluating global markets brings a real-life perspective to understanding both the history and future of digital transformation. Chris takes the approach of a fireside chat, speaking to us in a personal way where, no matter what our experience with digital transformation, we can relate to his stories, as well as to his honest passion to inform and educate."
Wayne Brown,
Managing Partner, The Walker Group
“Digital Human gives you a view into the future in a bold and imaginative way. Bankers the world over would benefit from Chris' practical clarity about where the evolution of financial services will lead us."
Chris Nichols,
Chief Strategy Officer, CenterState Bank
“Buckle up—Chris Skinner helps the reader peer around the corner by examining the past, present, and future trends leading humanity down a digital path of human revolution. Digital Human tackles the challenges of financial inclusion in a digital world struggling to assist with the plague of poverty. The internet of things is omnipresent in Skinner's unique journey, as digital advances are explored in the context of a human revolution and changing financial infrastructure."
Stephen G. Andrews,
Community Bank President
“If you're a traditional banker, reading Chris Skinner's Digital Human will feel like a SoulCycle kick-your-butt spin class. It will gut your view on traditional banking and likely freak you out on the long list of things your institution ought to do, including dumping your legacy core system. But you will walk away healthier and it will leave you with a wonderful possibility on how tech can rethink financial services into something that benefits everyone. Skinner has travelled the world and is one of the few that write about FinTech in an informed, funny and no-BS banker kind of way. Not only will you learn where the word ‘harlot’ originated but you will uncover the direction banks are going—namely, transforming from control freaks into open banks in a world destined to let people share their financial data where and when they want."
Mary Wisniewski,
Deputy Editor, BankThink;
Reporter, American Banker
“Chris Skinner, wise guide of the FinTech world, takes us on a new journey with his new book Digital Human. It gives us a chance to look into the past with the light of the future. For banks and financial players, this book is a perfect bi-directional mirror that will provide a better understanding of a new world. If they would use this mirror with Chris' guidance, they will find a path for their future; otherwise, they will just turn into memories of the past."
Ahmet Usta,
Chief Editor, FinTech Istanbul
“In order to be ready for the future, we should understand how the digital transformation has developed. Chris Skinner provides an in-depth look into what has happened and what is happening today. It is time for the financial services industry to reimagine how to offer finance through technology in the new era. Digital Human will help you understand digital transformation, make you think about your business and, above all, make you think about what you are going to face in the future."
Özge Çelik,
Senior Vice President, BKM
Copyright © 2018 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte. Ltd.
First published in 2018 by Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte. Ltd.
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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY WIFE KAMILA—
THE SWEETEST AND FUNNIEST PERSON I KNOW,
MY BEST FRIEND, AND MUM TO OUR
TWO LITTLE MIRACLES, EDDIE AND FREDDIE.
Books don't just appear but are an amalgam of ideas and inspirations. I've been travelling non-stop since Digital Bank was released in 2014, and a lot of the content of Digital Human is a reflection of those travels. However, I wouldn't be able to travel so much if my lovely wife Kamila wasn't so tolerant, and that's why this book is dedicated to her.
Then there are the many friends in my network. Too many to reference everyone individually but I would like to pull a few names out.
First of all, the 11:FS team of David Brear, Simon Taylor and Jason Bates. Great guys, great company and our podcast FinTech Insider has stormed the charts over the past year thanks to their hard work and dedication. Well done, guys.
Second, the FinTech Mafia, particularly Brett King and Jim Marous. Both gentlemen produce an amazing amount of content, and the quality never wavers.
Third, the people at Ant Financial, specifically Rita Liu and Xinyun Yang who were instrumental in getting the case study completed at the end of this book.
Fourth, the team at Nordic Finance Innovation, which I chair, particularly Iren Tranvag who has created a network across the region in the last two years that is second to none.
Finally, Soner Canko and his team at BKM Turkey, whose country is going through turbulent times but their solid support of my work is gratefully received.
There are many other people I would like to mention, and I could probably fill a few hundred pages of the book. However, there is one other person that I've worked with for too many years who is now reaching retirement, Andy Coppell. Andy and I set up the Financial Services Club in 2004 and he decided to retire in 2017. A great friend and inspiration, Andy will no doubt continue to bounce around the hallways of the City. Great technologists never retire; they just go and code more quietly.
I have always travelled but since Digital Bank was published in 2014, I have been travelling non-stop around the world. To show how hectic my schedule can be, there have been several occasions where I've travelled from the United States to Asia via Europe and back in a week. That's crazy, I know, but it has given me some amazing opportunities. Opportunities to learn and expand my horizons and knowledge, the sort of experiences that can only be gained through such travel. I have explored the caves of the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa, Roman remnants of Baalbek in Lebanon in the Fertile Crescent and the West Lake of Hangzhou, China, where I understood 4,000 years of civilisation through food.
Such extensive travel has led me to some fairly surprising conclusions that I'll share here. These conclusions are a mixture of my travel experiences, extensive reading whilst travelling and my own knowledge of financial services and humanity. Money and banking are at the heart of our world. After sex and food, most of us think about money more than anything else. Money is the single thing that controls our lives. It gives us the ability to live life to excess if we have more money than we need or it leads us to misery and depression if we have too little.
Unfortunately, far too many people have too little. One in eight Americans officially lives in poverty, translating into a figure of 43 million people in 2015, whilst one in five British people lives in poverty. Around the globe, almost half of the world's population lives in poverty. That's over three billion people living on less than $2.501 a day. Of those, one in three—1.3 billion people—lives in extreme poverty, living on less than $1.25 a day.
When I was growing up, we thought poor people lived in Africa, India and China. In the early to mid-1980s, our media covered terrible famines in Ethiopia and huge campaigns were launched, resulting in the first ever global music event, Live Aid, in 1985. What is intriguing today is that the very markets that were considered the poorest are now getting richer through a mixture of aid and opportunity. This aid is being distributed by the likes of the United Nations (UN) and World Bank, which are working with philanthropic and charitable non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Oxfam.
What I have personally seen, during the last decade, is that technology is playing a major role in making these problems change. Sure, there will always be poverty but a lot of today's poverty is created by the system. If you cannot get access to financial services, you are locked into poverty. The poorest people pay the most for moving money. They often are the most vulnerable, too. This combination of vulnerability and being locked out is the reason why so many people will never escape the poverty trap. But, as I've already said, that is now changing. Today, thanks to the simple mobile telephone, everyone can be connected globally in real time.
Mobile has been the real game changer. It is the driving force behind traditional retail financial institutions becoming a digital bank, and for creating new financial models for new financial technology firms, or FinTech firms as we know them. I discussed a lot about the foundations of the Internet of Value (IoV) created by FinTech and mobile in my last book, ValueWeb. In this book, I guess I've moved away a little from purely writing about tech and finance, although this is still core to my writing.
Yes, people have written about the fourth Industrial Revolution and focused on the latest technologies from robotics to artificial intelligence (AI). That's all in this book too, as no book about our future should overlook these huge ramifications of technology. However, the bigger picture is what I focus on here, and that bigger picture is not that we have a new industrial or technology revolution, but that we actually have a revolution of humanity.
The last great human revolution was the Industrial Revolution. Before that, there was the rise of civilisations during the second human revolution five thousand years ago. And before that, we had the first great revolution of humanity, which was becoming human ourselves. However, no one has written about the revolutions in humanity, or not that I know of. That is why this concept intrigues me so much. The enormous impact of the digital revolution, creating the fourth age of humanity, is that we are all connected one-to-one in real time for the very first time.
Now, 7.5 billion people, who were all unconnected a decade ago, are able to connect immediately through the mobile telephone. By connecting through technology, we instantly turn the simple telephone into something far more intelligent—it becomes a trading machine. Therefore, for the first time, we can all transact and trade with each other in real time, one-to-one. This is indeed a transformational revolution, and this is the revolution that I focus on here.
Digital Human takes the ideas of Digital Bank and ValueWeb and turns them into something wider. The book looks at the implications for humanity, trade and commerce and, the most encouraging thing of all, our future. What is happening through our digitalisation of humanity is that we are eroding boundaries and overcoming exclusion.
Financial exclusion applies to nearly two-thirds of humanity. Financial exclusion creates challenges because it's hard to transact and trade or achieve any real change if you cannot send and receive money. Therefore, the digitalisation of humanity is achieving the inclusion of everyone. For the first time in history, the system—the mobile network systems to be exact—is including everyone. This is the remarkable impact of the mobile network of value and is illustrated really well by Ant Financial, a spin-off from the Chinese internet giant Alibaba. Ant Financial is currently the only company in the world that is trying to build a global financial inclusion programme. The company's mission of inclusivity means that it aims to support two billion users by 2025. This is precisely why I chose to feature Ant Financial as a major case study at the end of this book.
Between Jack Ma, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and other leaders, who just happen to own nearly all the wealth on this planet,2 there is a vision of creating financial inclusion and alleviating poverty. Giving everyone the chance to access microloans, microsavings and microinsurance via mobile networks gives everyone a chance to improve their lives. That is the vision and it is starting to take shape.
This digitalisation of our planet is bringing about a major transformation. Everyone on the planet will be included in the network and everyone on the planet will get the chance to talk, trade and transact with everyone else on the planet in real time. Unlike the Industrial Revolution during which only a limited number of humans gained access to wealth and trade, this digital revolution will give everyone a chance.
Welcome to the fourth revolution of humanity and the biggest change our world has seen since the steam pump was patented in the seventeenth century.