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Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

FinTech does not live in London - It is global

“What happened? It was supposed to be Grexit, not Brexit!” These words, spoken by an Athens taxi driver, as I made way to a hackathon in Greece, the day after the UK voted to leave the European Union. I shrugged. My twitter feed was in meltdown by people who were simultaneously ‘shocked’ and ‘scared’ and ‘sad’ by a vote that they saw as not a refe...

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

Invest in dirty fingernails, not manicured hands

I used to work in an office in the Fruit and Wool Exchange on Brushfield Street in London back before Spitalfields Market was done over in the midst of the dot.com booming late 90s. A client dropped by the office to look at the space. They were a financial technology (as it was called back then) storta startup who was looking for office space. The...

/startups

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

Trust me, it's not a secret

A female CEO, of a shit hot FinTech company, needs to change her name back to her maiden name because investor after VC routinely ignored her in favour of her co-founder (who also happens to be her husband). A young Oxford graduate, who founded a small FinTech startup with her friends emails to ask 'How can I be a women in Fintech - when I feel so...

/startups Women in Technology

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

Fix the crumbling infrastructure or DIE!

Welcome back to this first full week of work after the holiday season for most of you. I live in the outer boroughs of Greater London. The leafy idyll that is zone 6 (we have a Nandos and everything). Which means I rely on the train to get to work - Southeastern Rail. This morning my normal 45 minute commute took two hours! (What does this have to...

/retail

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

You can believe in unicorns, I’d rather plant seeds

A famous quote from investor Warren Buffet goes along the lines of: "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” I’m going to turn that quote around. Banks, banking and the financial services industry will be transformed (for the better) in the next ten years because someone planted a seed in FinTech ...

/startups

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

My cause for 2015 - Bank accounts for all!

Now that I find myself running an accelerator in the FinTech space I get asked a lot of questions. What is the value for the startups? What do the banks get out of it? Are any real projects completed? I often sit on panels, next to representatives from banks - many of whom have publically invested hundreds of millions of dollars, pounds and euro...

/retail /startups

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

This journey ends with a brief goodbye...but not for long

There are times and dates in your life when you look back and think – yes, that was when my life did a pivot. When you feel your world turn and find yourself facing a new and sometimes scary direction. I’m not talking about dates you plan and know in advance – like when you graduate from university or get married – but dates that take you by surpri...

/startups

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

My trip to payments geek paradise...

...and I loved it. Payments professionals from a wide range of geographies gathered in Barcelona for Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance last week. The main topics of conversation centred on real-time payments, the upcoming PSD II, new entrants to the market and, of course, the blockchain. While the actual sessions themselves were under the Chath...

/payments

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

Go forth young'uns and get me some 'innovation!'

I had dinner on Sunday night with three 13 year old girls. They were the daughter and two friends, of a close friend of mine I hadn't seen in a while. In addition to catching up on old times over a bottle of wine (with the mother, of course) I took the dinner table opportunity to ask the girls a few questions. You see, they were all born in 2001....

/retail Disruption in Retail Banking

Elizabeth Lumley

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

I had a bank in Indonesia

It has long been my personal feeling, based on over 20 years writing about banks (or banking or financial services or FinTech, what have you) that anyone who thinks it would be a good idea to start a bank should have their heads examined. However, as of January 2015, 26 banks were in discussion with the Bank of England’s Financial Conduct Authori...

/retail Disruption in Retail Banking

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