About Chris
Author and Commentator
Understand the past. Predict the future.
Everyone has an opinion about the future. Chris Skinner has more than three decades of evidence.
Chris is one of the world’s leading independent commentators on banking, finance, payments and technology. For more than thirty years, he has documented how technology changes the financial system — not afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight, but as it happened.
He wrote about digital banking as the internet changed how banks operated, mobile as it changed how customers behaved, fintech as start-ups challenged the incumbents, cryptocurrencies as they challenged conventional ideas of money, and open banking as it challenged the boundaries of financial institutions. Today, his focus is artificial intelligence, autonomous finance, quantum computing and the technologies shaping finance next.
That history matters because every technological revolution arrives with predictions that everything is about to change. The internet was going to kill the banks. Mobile was going to kill the branch. Fintech was going to kill the incumbents. Bitcoin was going to kill traditional money. Blockchain was going to remove the intermediaries. Now artificial intelligence is going to reinvent everything.
Some of those predictions were right. Many were wrong.
Chris documented what actually happened.
For more than twenty years, The Finanser has provided a running commentary on the transformation of finance, adding to a body of work built through books, research, speaking and conversations with financial leaders around the world. Together, it provides a living record of what was promised, what worked, what failed, what survived and, most importantly, why.
That gives Chris a distinctive perspective on the future. He is not trying to predict everything. His territory is deliberately focused:
Banking. Finance. Payments. Technology.
Technology changes constantly, but the forces determining whether it succeeds are remarkably persistent. Customers have to change their behaviour. Institutions have to respond. Regulators have to catch up. Business models have to work. Trust has to move. Understanding those patterns is what turns history into evidence about what happens next.
There are commentators who explain what is happening today and futurists who imagine what might happen tomorrow. Chris connects the two. He combines more than three decades of accumulated knowledge with deep expertise in finance and technology to answer one focused question:
Where is finance going next, and why?
In a world where information is instant, commentary is everywhere and AI can summarise almost anything, context becomes more valuable, not less. Knowing what came before, recognising the patterns, understanding what genuinely changed and identifying what is truly different this time takes experience.
Chris Skinner has spent more than three decades building that experience.
Understand the past. Make sense of the present. Predict the future.
Awards
2026 Newsletter of the Year
The 10 Most Empowering Business Leaders to Watch in 2025
Top 50 Thought Leader EMEA
Top 10 Thought Leader in Climate Change
Top 25 Thought Leader in Ecosystems
Top 10 Thought Leader in Finance
Top 50 Thought Leader in FinTech
Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Finance 2024
Global Awards
Lifetime Achievement Award
Global 100 – 2024 Winner
Chris Skinner – Financial Markets Advisor of the Year – The Finanser – UK 2023
Best Financial Markets Advisor of the Year 2023
Clients
