Summer seemed to arrive this week. No more hiding indoors huddled over a screen. With warmer weather, it’s the opportunity to get outside.

So sitting outside this weekend, basking in the sun, my mind turned to the garden… Annoyance, that the Heron seemed to have snacked on all of the fish in my pond. Amusement as to why there appeared to be some items of washing on my roof; And then the big question, what would be the best biscuit for my cup of tea, with the latter being a source of some consultation, with both ‘formal’ and impromptu surveys over the week driving some considerable heated debate.

That’s rich

The big shock from this survey was that no one seemed to mention the poor old rich tea biscuit, a standard staple of my youth… It seems, these days, it is all about the Digestive instead.

In the taxonomy of biscuits, digestives, apparently hold the unique position as the gold standard against which all other biscuits can be measured. Hobnobs, chocolate coatings, and cream fillings are all a step up, before getting to the real controversy… the jaffa cake and of course tea cakes…. luxurious yes, but are they even biscuits!… but Rich Tea, not to be seen.

Let me know your favourites here….

Nearing the end, of the beginning

In other news, consumer duty is starting to come back on the agenda again, with more webinars and increased visibility.

There are now less than 75 days left to go, and time is very very tight. This is especially the case if substantial changes need to be made.

In discussion with Frank Brown and Kevin Still, both experts in this space, it does feel like there is still much more that needs to be done generally in the industry.

For Collections in particular the challenges I have been hearing is around the evidencing of good customer outcomes (MI), together with cultural change. There is still mich to do.

I have added the interview with Frank, and a summary of the Consumer Duty in the links below.

• [RO-AR Video] : Regulatory and Cultural Changes upon us
• [RO-AR INSIGHTS] : FCA Consumer Duty Summary

AI – are you fed up with it yet?

The news and excitement around AI does not seem to be slowing down. It is quite tiring, the topic is no longer fresh, but every week there seems to be a new development.

I am starting to wonder if this is another turning point or inflection for us, in the same way, mobile phones, computers, the Internet, TVs, plumbing, cars and washing machines were… just from this week, some highlighted stories

• There has been more discussion on the further increase of the number of tokens used within the models to make them more powerful
• Open Source models are now also starting to come online too, this is no longer just ChatGPT, Bard and Bing Chat, but fragmenting with open source GPT too.
• And, governments starting to pay attention, but to be honest struggling to pick up speed, with the EU (and Brazil) being furthest ahead on legislation.

In the media, there is still an awful lot of negativity. We are often fearful about what we do not understand.

This was the same, if you remember, for Cars, TV, the Internet and more recently Blockchain. I am still in the camp of viewing these AI- Large Language models as being huge time savers, allowing me to do more and freeing my time to concentrate, create new things and enjoy that biscuit.

We can either choose to adopt or not, in all of these cases… however, I am get the distinct feeling, much like the early days of the internet, of the lift being on the ground floor and going up.

If you get on, it can result in fantastic opportunities and fun… if you do not, life will continue as normal for a bit, but then there is potential to get left behind… (and if you are left behind the stairs are awfully hard work to catch up).

Something else to think about these days… a topic I will no doubt we will come back to again… have a good week everyone.

Over the past week, I have found myself in repeated conversations about AI and large language models… it seems like interest in it continues to grow at pace, expanding beyond ChatGPT to other models and uses too.

The rate of development in this AI space, with new products coming to market attention, is just astounding – and far from being big tech only, open source models, able to run on PCs (soon phones?), are already being discussed – it does feel a genie has just been let out its the bottle.

I haven’t really felt this level of excitement for a while. Not maybe since the dawn of the internet or the mobile smartphone… there is a sense of massive opportunity, that new things are possible and a potential to make life better, mixed with the uncertainty of change.

It’s as if we’re standing on the precipice of a new era.

And, just like a universal Swiss Army Knife, does AI-LLM have the potential to be the fix all, providing solutions to many of the problems we face today? (modern day problems that is, rather than real problems… although maybe it can help with some of these too?)

Comedy – the last frontier?

Adoption is clearly on the rise – Notice more use of emojis on LinkedIn posts – ChatGPT; Smoother to the point headlines – ChatGPT; Waffling a bit in generalities – ChatGPT; Not making sense explaining a complex concept (and making a joke of it) – nope this is me!

Comedy aside… For those in creative spaces, this new technology is an incredible time-saver and let’s be frank about it… once you have started to use it, it is incredibly hard to stop.

Debates over use

All this fast adoption has also ignited lots of debate.

• Should we call a halt to development and introduce more controls?
• Is this the end of society as we know it?

Some concerns do seem valid… the thought of this type of AI interacting with itself, between models, creating its own prompts, and continuously improving is unsettling.

Likewise, that they have not yet been connected to large-scale systems in this form, for now, also seems a blessing.

However, we can no longer unsee what we have seen, and having seen its potential, my view is that it is now going to be incredibly hard to put away… it is really a little too late.

It is now out there, in the wild and we are going to have to adapt… As a result, there will be business implications and not all necessarily positive.

Changing business models

By way of example, over recent years many companies have poured immense time, effort and resources into the development of new tools and techniques for process improvement.

These, often bespoke, solutions and business models, as suddenly starting to seem clunky and expensive, when I can develop something similar, with the same output all for a fraction of the cost with my general ‘swiss army knife’ GPT approach.

Just in the same way that no one buys a digital camera or a flashlight anymore (we just use our smartphones) – it has the potential to fundamentally change the business, and societal, landscape.

Try to keep up

With such a pace of change, if you’re not using it now, or at least understanding how it’s used, there is the potential to fall behind.

It is fast becoming pervasive, is quite thrilling to observe, and helping in part to unleash new levels of creativity – in volume rather than quality at least!

It is all exciting to watch closely, to see where the journey leads us. Hopefully, it will end in a better place than before… which if you look at history of previous cycles (PC, internet, smartphone) I do have some optimism about..:)

Time to now head off for a quick game of Candy Crush… have a good week everyone.

This weekend was the King’s coronation in the UK, with much pomp and circumstance to watch; tea and biscuits to consume.

While the festivities were undoubtedly memorable, the event also heavily emphasized, a royal flush of ideas… inclusion, tolerance, and having a duty of care to others – values that resonated beyond the event itself, across the UK, wider society, and yes even in the financial services industry.

Quick wins…

In today’s fast-paced world, we often find ourselves looking for quick, easy answers to what are sometimes complex and nuanced problems, often where there is no easy answer too.

This tendency makes us all susceptible to taking shortcuts and making quick decisions based on opinion rather than data… however, sometimes making a good decision really matters with quick fixes only getting us into trouble later on.

Recently I have been seeing, an increasing number of attention-grabbing posts on LinkedIn… “The secret of how I made $10m in 90 days”… “Follow my system, guaranteed to make your business successful”… “Passive income from doing nothing”… “Money for free”.. (okay the last two are not true, but you get the gist of it!)

… & snake oil

Clickbait…? Maybe… or maybe I have missed the boat on making easy money… everyone I interact with seems to work hard and not make easy fortunes, and those that have done very well have also worked really hard, and been really smart. (the trend – working hard and being smart…)

So how do these work? It seems that one sure way to be successful is by offering to sell other people the secret of how to be successful… Maybe this is the secret they are selling… the quick-fix mentality, a fear of missing out and we fall for it…

A duty of care…

Financial services are of course no stranger to these dynamics either – great solutions can be easily promised that are not ideal for customers… only later leading to disappointment or worse, unpaid debt or distress.

Reputable companies, of course, do not do this, and in fact the regulator now also protects customers to ensure all of them do not too.

The bar of responsibility is also being raised yet again with the upcoming consumer duty. The initial implementation deadline passed only last week, with the duty to be implemented in full by July 31st.

… to help reevaluate

These new regulations serve as a call for us all to reevaluate our customer strategies and prioritize genuine, long-lasting customer relationships. Something that the coronation this weekend also underlined.

We all need to build better communities with strong values… one where we can all support each other, lifting each other up to be better versions of ourselves.

So whilst there is more to do and undoubtedly more to come, this is also something to reflect on for the week.

This weekend was the King’s coronation in the UK, with much pomp and circumstance to watch; tea and biscuits to consume.

While the festivities were undoubtedly memorable, the event also heavily emphasized, a royal flush of ideas… inclusion, tolerance, and having a duty of care to others – values that resonated beyond the event itself, across the UK, wider society, and yes even in the financial services industry.

Quick wins…

In today’s fast-paced world, we often find ourselves looking for quick, easy answers to what are sometimes complex and nuanced problems, often where there is no easy answer too.

This tendency makes us all susceptible to taking shortcuts and making quick decisions based on opinion rather than data… however, sometimes making a good decision really matters with quick fixes only getting us into trouble later on.

Recently I have been seeing, an increasing number of attention-grabbing posts on LinkedIn… “The secret of how I made $10m in 90 days”… “Follow my system, guaranteed to make your business successful”… “Passive income from doing nothing”… “Money for free”.. (okay the last two are not true, but you get the gist of it!)

… & snake oil

Clickbait…? Maybe… or maybe I have missed the boat on making easy money… everyone I interact with seems to work hard and not make easy fortunes, and those that have done very well have also worked really hard, and been really smart. (the trend – working hard and being smart…)

So how do these work? It seems that one sure way to be successful is by offering to sell other people the secret of how to be successful… Maybe this is the secret they are selling… the quick-fix mentality, a fear of missing out and we fall for it…

A duty of care…

Financial services are of course no stranger to these dynamics either – great solutions can be easily promised that are not ideal for customers… only later leading to disappointment or worse, unpaid debt or distress.

Reputable companies, of course, do not do this, and in fact the regulator now also protects customers to ensure all of them do not too.

The bar of responsibility is also being raised yet again with the upcoming consumer duty. The initial implementation deadline passed only last week, with the duty to be implemented in full by July 31st.

… to help reevaluate

These new regulations serve as a call for us all to reevaluate our customer strategies and prioritize genuine, long-lasting customer relationships. Something that the coronation this weekend also underlined.

We all need to build better communities with strong values… one where we can all support each other, lifting each other up to be better versions of ourselves.

So whilst there is more to do and undoubtedly more to come, this is also something to reflect on for the week.

Let me know your thoughts on this subject. Share your opinion in the comments below, and let’s continue the conversation as the consumer duty deadline approaches.