Still time for tea?

From RO-AR.com

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.