Bankloch

Normally my blogs always concern the financial services and IT industry, but self-driving cars and specifically the impacts they will have on our society, fascinates me that much, I couldn’t resist writing also a blog about this topic. The self-driving car is all over the media. With dozens of big tech firms (Apple, Google-Waymo, Uber, Lift, Amazon, Tesla…​) and traditional car companies (GM, BMW, Audi, Mercedes Benz) working on developing and improving self-driving cars it is no wonder that evolutions are coming at a tremendous (exponential) pace. Don’t expect however the full self-driving car to be available for the large public any time soon (a McKinsey study estimates autonomous vehicles driving around our towns from 2030), but it’s worth to reflect already about the implications. These are difficult to under-estimate. Especially as the introduction of self-driving cars will surely   coincide with 2 other important evolutions : The rise of the   digital...

Historically   banks have been hesitant to adopt open source software   (i.e. software where source code is shared and made freely available). With traditional vendors like IBM, TIBCO, Oracle…​ strongly positioned in this industry, the move to open source has been slow. In recent years, forced by a rapidly changing business, banks are transforming their IT organizations considerably, adopting new technologies and methodologies like Cloud, microservices, Open APIs, DevOps, Agile and also Open Source (often these different adoptions enforce each other). The Open Source movement has already   reached a certain level of maturity . While 5-10 years ago, Open Source was still considered something of computer-nerds, idealists and small start-ups, today it has become mainstream. The recent acquisitions of open-source companies by large established corporate tech-vendors is the best proof of this evolution: SalesForce bought MuleSoft for $6.5 billion in March 2018 ...

A bit more than 3 months ago, I submitted the blog "PSD2 - 10 questions I would like to see a clear answer on" ( https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/psd2-10-questions-i-would-like-see-clear-answer-joris-lochy/ ), raising 10 questions around PSD2, on which I was searching an answer on. Via different channels, I got requests of many people, that they would love to get also the answers on those questions. With the excellent support of Ralf Ohlhausen (Executive Advisor at PPRO and Tink) and the input of some other people, I have tried to compile an answer on these 10 questions. Unfortunately, people looking for a clear, undisputable answer, will be disappointed. As with most complex topics in the financial industry, the answer to almost each question is "it depends…​". It depends on whether you look at the strict interpretation of the European directive (normally only 1 answer possible), the local interpretation of the national regulatory authorities (so 28 possibl...