I’ve blogged on some of the themes I’m going to cover below, but the story gets clearer and clearer in my head the more I blog about and talk about it, so this version may be a little clearer than some that have gone before.
The first is that banks’ organisational structures have to move from being locked in, proprietary, tightly-coupled to open, partnering and loosely-coupled. It’s all about plug-and-play, open sourcing technologies based on apps, APIs and analytics. A bank has a strong position in this space, as they own the marketplace today, and should be building the platforms to allow their customers great experiences by connecting with the best-in-class APIs out there.
From an Open API viewpoint, there are 1000’s of start-ups focused upon doing one thing really well, from making a merchant payment (Stripe) to borrowing money (SoFi, Prosper, Zopa) to investing (eToro, Zulu Trader, robo-advisors). The thing is that, as a customer, I have no idea out of these 1000s of firms doing one thing well, which to choose from and who to trust, if any of them. So, a bank should be partnering with the firms they think do these things the best, and bringing them to me through curation.
After all, if 1000s of new, shiny FinTech firms are doing one thing well, how can a bank compete when they’re full of legacy and heritage that means they do 1000 things average? Reboot through co-creation and partnering, and gradually reshape the bank for the 21st century by replacing the bits that don’t work with a partners’ capabilities that do.
OK, OK, so you’ve all heard all that bluff before, but it’s my last few concluding slides that are meant to really hit this point home. Y’see most banks’ leadership teams are fatally flawed, as they’re run by a bunch of old guys who understand banking, but have never had any technology experience in their life. 94% of C-level’s in the banks are bankers; only 6% have any technology experience.
