Nigel Morris-Cotterill's blog

Good grief. This blog has always been a bit sporadic but now it looks downright dilatory.

So, you'd think that, except for one post last month I'd slept the winter away, wouldn't you?

Nah.

There's a story and this is the biggest milestone

At least for now. There's more to come.

It's the everyday challenge for the financial crime risk officer.

There is something he's not satisfied with but he can't prove it - it's his experience, what some call his "gut reaction" that says "this doesn't stack up. We shouldn't do this business."

But there are reasons why the business should be done..

There is a fundamental imbalance and, incredibly, a fundamental irony.

Microsoft is pushing hard, and I use the term "pushing" deliberately. It has turned the world into addicts for the product only it sells and it makes withdrawal difficult and, even, frightening. MS is also providing purported advice while, well, pushing and using fear as its tool. Today, my PC (along with millions of others I assume) woke with a splash screen telling me Windows 7 will soon be orphaned. It invites "learn more." But all addictions can be beaten...

Grab (an online car booking service) has just added photo (aka facial) recognition to its app.

It just took me five minutes for it to take a photo it was happy with.

I'm not.

I had put a CD into a crappy player, through an ancient and slowly fading Sony amp and some cheap speakers. It didn't sound good but it sounded a bit better than previous times I'd played it. The reason for the experiment was simple: it sounds absolutely awful on my good stuff. All my good stuff. It even sounds awful on my PC speakers. Why?

When I first started working in money laundering risk management in the early 1990s, reputational risk was something that greatly exercised my mind: surely customers would walk away from financial and professional service providers associated with laundering. That didn't happen.

Something else did.

I know. You read the headline, looked at the URL and thought "he's lost it. Again." But I haven't. It's time that we stopped talking nonsense, stopped using lightweight buzz-wordy phrases and acronyms and got to grips with some basic truths.

It's more than four years since my son released his first album, "Stay." And now, with "Lost and Found," he's back. "Stay" was good. "Lost and Found" is much, much better.

The surprising news that Carlos Ghosn has been arrested on tax evasion charges in Japan and has already been turfed out of at least one of his senior positions in the Nissan-Mitsubishi-Renault triumvirate which he is widely regarded as having brought, in each case, back from the dead is worthy of comment, regardless of the eventual outcome of the investigation and charges.

On 8th November, 2018, I had the opportunity to present to students at Tunku Abdul Rahman University College my guide to success in job interviews. Here it is.