Chris Skinner

1 week ago | advisorpedia.com | Chris Skinner

There are hundreds of articles online about “the death of” something, maybe thousands. I’ve written several of them covering everything from the death of cards (debit and credit) and keyboards to the end of branches, cash, banks and more but they are all still here, so let’s not expect their expiration to be too fast. Having said that, the latest prediction of death is the iPhone: Rotten Apple: are we finally watching the death of the iPhone?

2 weeks ago | advisorpedia.com | Chris Skinner

I’ve recently blogged about bank IT outages … Bank IT outages ... let's talk about the bank systems Jenga … and it is getting more and more common. For example, in the UK, Barclays suffered 33 system failures between January 2023 and February 2025, according to data from the House of Commons Treasury select committee. Over the same period, HSBC and Santander were both hit by 32 outages. Meanwhile, Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81 TRILLION, when it meant to send only $280.

3 weeks ago | advisorpedia.com | Chris Skinner

The year is 2100. Earth is still here, but the Elon Musk vision is now delivered. What is that vision? Read on … Earth in 2100 is a place of automation. Everything is connected. Robots are everywhere. Self-driving aeroplanes and cars move goods and services. More than this, the world is run on a network. The currency is digital and anything that needs to be ordered is done automatically. Gardens are mowed, houses are painted, buildings are developed, and it is all run on a chip.

3 weeks ago | advisorpedia.com | Chris Skinner

Some years ago an elderly gentleman entered the lobby of one of Britain’s biggest banks demanding to talk to someone about the £5 million he had been given by David Cameron. A senior manager at the bank took the gentleman to a consultation room, and it turned out that the man had been notified of a lottery win run by the government and, to claim it, he just needed to give his bank details.

1 month ago | advisorpedia.com | Chris Skinner

There’s a very interesting analysis of the cyber attacks on Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and Harrods on the BBC this week. If you have access to their iPlayer, then it’s well worth a watch: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002d2lh/inside-the-high-street-cyberattacks If you don’t, then here’s the summary as it illustrates our fragile digital world today. In April, Marks & Spencer’s systems were taken over by hackers.