In conversation with Samuel Norman, Senior City Reporter at CityAM.
A leading voice in fintech, financial services, and all things market moves, Sam leads up city reporting for CityAM. He has interviewed the biggest names in European fintech including Revolut, Starling, bunq, Zilch (and more!) and regularly attends and speaks at industry events like Fintech Fringe and Money2020 Europe.
Sam came up as a true-blue journalist:
“I started out in student journalism and then continued to get my NCTJ certification. Lessons learned: journalism is an endurance sport. You have to have the long-term appetite if you’re going to cut it.”
The best piece of advice he’s ever been given? “Say yes to everything! Truly golden advice, and the best way to sharpen your wit and skillset.”
In his time at high-flying national titles like the Daily Mail, Sky News, and now City AM, Sam has seen his share of market shifts.
Of the evolution of fintech, he says “it’s constantly evolving and moving so rapidly, which makes it hard (and exciting) to keep up. Particularly on the AI frontier, where we’ve moved past chatbots so quick that quantum will be mainstream before we know it. Discussions around regulation also seem to be opening up as time progresses.”
And as the market evolves, Sam wants to see companies meeting those changes with transparency and opinion. “Be open towards voicing views around regulation and red tape across the industry! It’s something I’m seeing talked about more, but sometimes [CityAM] gets the same main handful of criticisms and whispers from the same people. It’d be great to have more constructive open dialogues around this.”
At the same time, don’t bring Sam a story you can’t back up. “If you’re offering me figures, I need to see the full picture.” Giving wider market relevance and context is critical – particularly in such a quickly changing ecosystem. Whether a single data point or full scale survey, CityAM readers need to know ‘so what’ and why news is market shifting.
Sam leads the banking and fintech beat as well as capital markets and economics, covering stories fromLondon’s race to retain its fintech crown to the battle for British retail bank accounts.He’s also taken ownership of CityAM’s morning liveblog coverage, which you can find running onsite and app from 7am every day.
Quickfire Q&A:
- Fintech company to watch: Zopa Bank
- Most overused Fintech buzzword: Challenger
- Dream interview: Has to be Nik Storonsky (read Sam’s coverage of Revolut’s filing here)