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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
"A clear, practical, and long-overdue guide to a powerful idea that the industry has largely overlooked.”
Paul Cobban, ex Chief Transformation Officer, DBS
"Healthy Money is a must-read for anyone serious about transforming financial services for the better."
Simon McNamara ex-CIO RBS / NatWest
How-to guide for incumbent banks to use digital transformation to improve the financial lives of their customers
Healthy Money serves as both a polemic and a practical handbook on upgrading banks to be future-relevant. It uniquely integrates customer, technology, and leadership perspectives to build a "Healthy Money"-oriented bank, focusing on how banks can transform, with the explicit goal of helping customers run their financial lives effectively.
Written by Alastair Campbell, a seasoned executive with over 30 years of international experience in banking and banking advisory, this book delivers insights on:
- Thriving at a time when most growth is going on outside of the incumbent banks
- Leading a shift in focus to drive success through digital customer engagement, and perpetually giving customers more for less
- Leveraging the new realities of the deflationary effect of digital technology
- Redesigning the bank's architecture around a modular, layered and loosely coupled approach that emphasises rich customer IDs and networks, exchange assurance, fungible/configurable services and personalised experiences
- Remaking services around supporting customers to build and sustain healthy financial lives
Healthy Money is required reading for all executives and professionals at Incumbent banks seeking to reclaim centre stage by fundamentally addressing their most pressing issues in a unified way.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Notes
CHAPTER ONE: NATURE OF THE CHALLENGE
1.1 THREE MUTUALLY REINFORCING TRANSFORMATIONS
1.2 BANKING IN THE POST‐BANK WORLD
1.3 CASE STUDIES – DIGITAL‐ONLY EXEMPLARS
1.4 OVERVIEW OF THE THREE TRANSFORMATIONS
1.5 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
1.6 APPENDIX: ARE YOU A “2030 PROBABLE WINNER”?
Notes
CHAPTER TWO: THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE
2.1 OVERVIEW: KEY FORCES RESHAPING THE SECTOR
2.2 MODERN FINANCIAL LIVES: FOUR ARCHETYPES TO CONSIDER
2.3 WAVES OF DIGITIZATION: THE ERA OF DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT
2.4 TECHNOLOGY TRENDS: IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, DIGITAL ASSETS AND NEW DEVICES
Notes
CHAPTER THREE: THE CUSTOMER TRANSFORMATION
3.1 RETHINKING THE CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER
3.2 RETHINKING FINANCIAL HEALTH
3.3 THEME 1: ENABLE DAY‐TO‐DAY HOUSEHOLD FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
3.4 THEME 2: EMPOWER EXCHANGE
3.5 THEME 3: FACILITATE CUSTOMERS' FINANCIAL NETWORKS
3.6 THEME 4: UNBLOCK ACCUMULATION AND DECUMULATION
3.7 THEME 5: PUT CUSTOMERS IN CONTROL OF THEIR MONEY, RELATIONSHIPS AND DATA
3.8 RETHINKING CUSTOMER DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT
Notes
CHAPTER FOUR: THE ARCHITECTURE TRANSFORMATION: FROM ACCOUNTS‐BASED ARCHITECTURE TO CUSTOMER'S GRAPHS, EVENTS AND SMART CONTRACTS
4.1 PRISONERS OF THE ARCHITECTURE
4.2 THEME 1: LOOSE COUPLING
4.3 THEME 2: CUSTOMER GRAPHS AND EVENT HISTORIES
4.4 THEME 3: CONFIGURABLE PRODUCTS
4.5 THEME 4: CONTEXT‐SPECIFIC EXPERIENCES
4.6 THEME 5: REAL‐TIME SETTLEMENT AND ACCOUNTS
4.7 SUMMARY: THE HEALTHY MONEY ARCHITECTURAL LAYERS
Notes
CHAPTER FIVE: THE LEADERSHIP TRANSFORMATION
5.1 DRIVERS OF INCUMBENCY INERTIA
5.2 NEW REALITIES, NEW MINDSETS
5.3 THEME 1: PERPETUALLY REASSERT THE HEADROOM OF UNMET CUSTOMER NEEDS
5.4 THEME 2: RUTHLESSLY FOCUS ON THE MULTIPLIER EFFECTS
5.5 THEME 3: SYNCHRONIZE THE SHORT TERM AND THE LONG TERM
5.6 THEME 4: RESET THE LANGUAGE TO REFLECT THE ECONOMICS OF TECHNOLOGY
5.7 THEME 5: DEFINE REVOLUTION INTERNALLY, AND EVOLUTION EXTERNALLY
5.8 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
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Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Begin Reading
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Index
End User License Agreement
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HEALTHY MONEY ENDORSEMENTS
“For far too long, banks have clung to the status quo – rebranding rigid products, digitizing at the edges, and keeping the balance sheet as their North Star. Enter “Healthy Money,” a bold wake‐up call for bankers ready to truly shake up financial services. Campbell urges the industry to break the mould: put customers’ real lives at the heart of banking and harness technology to deliver genuine, lasting value.
This isn’t just theory. Campbell crafts a dynamic, customer‐first framework that empowers people with the products and support they need to build robust financial health. The vision is both radical and practical – proving banks can transform, thrive, and profit by championing their customers' well‐being. Here’s hoping leaders worldwide seize this moment and run with it.”
—Andree Simon, CEO Finca International
“From my perspective, Healthy Money is a timely piece of work that addresses the most critical challenges and opportunities facing the banking industry today.
What sets this book apart is its honesty and depth of insight. Rather than simply discussing “digital transformation” as a buzzword, there is a compelling and actionable blueprint for the industry to move beyond its deeply entrenched, self‐limiting institutional myths. The book correctly identifies that the crisis for incumbent banks isn't a decline in their business but a failure to participate in the rapid growth occurring outside of their traditional models.
The central thesis on the three mutually reinforcing transformations – customer, architecture, and leadership – is spot on. As someone who has lived through the complexities of both building a new digital bank and helping incumbents modernize, I can attest that these three pillars are inextricably linked. Campbell calls out that they get watered‐down and they 100% do! The book brilliantly articulates how a superficial approach to any one of these areas will ultimately lead to failure, a reality that, as the book points out, over 70% of digital transformations in banking face.
This book is a must‐read for any executive, board member, or strategist looking to win in the future and not water‐down like the rest.”
—Andy Farmer, Founder and CEO, Ikigai Digital
“The first step in any transformation is setting a direction that truly inspires. Too often, banks have struggled to define a purpose beyond profit, limiting themselves to incremental tweaks of outdated models. As a result, most transformations fall short of meaningful impact.
Campbell challenges this mindset. He reminds us that no one wakes up thinking, “Today’s a great day to do some banking.” Banks that want to thrive must reimagine their role – starting with a deep understanding of customers’ financial lives and building services from that perspective back.
This is the heart of Healthy Money – a clear, practical, and long‐overdue guide to a powerful idea that the industry has largely overlooked.”
—Paul Cobban, ex Chief Transformation Officer DBS
“In a rapidly evolving digital economy, where emerging technologies redefine every facet of finance, Healthy Money is the indispensable guide for leaders seeking clarity, strategy, and sustainable impact. This book empowers readers to harness innovation not just to keep pace, but to lead – maximising organisational potential while staying laser‐focused on meeting the ever‐evolving needs of the modern customer. Insightful, practical, and future‐ready, Healthy Money is a must‐read for anyone serious about transforming financial services for the better.”
—Simon McNamara,ex‐CIO RBS/NatWest
“Banks fall into two groups, those who know, and those who don’t know that the industry is facing multiple extinction level threats for current consumer banking business models. Either group would benefit hugely from reading this excellent book which sets out the challenges, but more importantly a roadmap for solutions in a very clear and readable manner”
—Paul Rolles, co‐Founder HyperLayer
“The world's leading banks have truly embraced digital transformation; not simply as a means to digitise banking, but rather as a way to digitally empower their customers' financial lives.
This simple but profound distinction is at the heart of “Healthy Money” – the idea that this true north can unlock profound change in what the organisation does and how it operates. It’s a critical re‐awakening of competitive relevance to incumbent banks – who are challenged everyday by global technology players of different kinds looking to seize their customers’ attention and engagement.
“Healthy Money” is a unique guidebook into what it really takes to make digital transformation a source of commercial, and societal, reawakening for incumbent banks.”
—Ananya Sen, Managing Director, Global Head of Consumer Products, DBS Bank
“Banks won’t evolve by crawling faster. Healthy Money is a call to grow wings. Campbell doesn’t just critique – he rebuilds. With precision and quiet urgency, he challenges us to become what our customers have always hoped we could be. Every serious banking leader should read this – twice.”
—Mike DeNoma, ex‐CEO Consumer Banking, Standard Chartered Bank
“If you were to build a bank from scratch to help people live healthy financial lives, what would it look like? How would you do it? How would it be different from today's incumbents? How would you design its technology stack? Its product set? Its financial accounts? Its operating model? Its customer engagement model? Its value proposition to customers, employees, and society at large?
And if you are currently leading a bank, how would you transition to such a new bank? How would your focus have to change? What steps, in what sequence, would you need to take?
In Healthy Money, the answers you'll find to all these questions and more add up to an ambitious and practical manifesto for reclaiming the centre stage that banks are losing to digital challengers and Big Tech.”
—Ken Favaro, Chief Strategy Officer, Bera.ai
“In Healthy Money, Campbell delivers a compelling blueprint for rebuilding banking around what truly matters – helping customers lead financially healthy lives. This is not another guide to digitizing the status quo. It’s a call to redesign the system itself: grounded in evolving customer needs, powered by modern architecture, and led by a new kind of leadership – curious, purpose‐driven, and culturally aligned to serve.”
—Aman Narain, ex‐Global Head of Platforms and Embedded Banking, HSBC
“‘Healthy Money’ is a timely and visionary manifesto for change – combining what truly matters in customer and societal banking with the transformative potential of emerging technology. It dares us to go beyond the early disruption sparked by challenger banks and imagine a financial system that is radically inclusive, sustainable, and fit for the future. This is not just a call to action – it’s a bold blueprint for building a fairer financial world for all.”
—Kent Mackenzie, Group COO, Corlytics; Fintech Advisor & Investor
HEALTHY MONEY
Building the Bank of the Future Around FINANCIAL HEALTH, Data Networks and Ecosystems
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
This edition first published 2026© 2026 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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To Luis and Niall
PREFACE
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones”
—JM Keynes (KC1902)
Incumbency, in the face of digital disruption, has often been viewed as a disadvantage.
Faced with agile tech‐centric new competitors, the incumbents within many industries have been caught short or found wanting. Blockbuster, Kodak, Sears and Nokia proved unable to respond as their industries evolved; others, like Sony, Nike and IBM, found ways to re‐invent themselves.
The reality of the last 10 years in banking is subtle. The industry is clearly reshaping. The new digital‐only challenger banks are starting to make real strides; and technology‐centric players – platforms, embedded finance players and BigTech – are systematically and relentlessly reshaping the sector. But that doesn’t mean incumbents lack options or advantage. They have large franchises and the custodial‐trust of their customers (as the regulated players expected to keep our money and our data safe).
No, incumbency isn’t a negative. But inertia might be. Customers aren’t switching away from incumbents in sudden breaks, they are drifting away in small steps – adding new digital‐only providers into their financial lives, to cover specific parts of their everyday financial habits and needs not well covered by incumbents.
The challenge is not so much that financial services are becoming digital. That’s been true for 30 years already. Its more that financial services are becoming configurable. Configurable financial services means that services can be built around the fundamental financial life‐needs of each customer. Rigid, bank‐defined product distinctions (mortgages, credit cards, deposits) can make way for more fungible, hybrid and use case specific services; and customers can manage their financial relationships, their transactions and their data flexibly and proactively. It means that the sector is able to provide services beyond the limits of the bank’s balance sheet; services directly fulfilling customers’ needs to live a healthy financial life.
But configurable financial services require a different architecture for the provider – not just a digital version of the existing architecture. This architectural evolution needs to happen in lock step with the customer evolution of becoming more directly focused on supporting customers’ everyday financial lives.
And here’s the rub. In most banks, the conversations about the future customer offer and the conversations about future state architecture happen in very different places – with completely different people involved, each operating to very different standards. It’s hard to build a shared vision of the headroom for new customer growth if we had a more configurable architecture, and, at the same time, the vision and roadmap for migrating to that configurable architecture. But without that joined‐up view of the future – neither the customer transformation nor the architectural transformation will gain sufficient traction.
Which leads to a second potential incumbency drag factor – tech‐fluency. Top teams in incumbents have typically grown up in an era where they didn’t need a technology‐orientation to do their jobs. As a result, they tend to view technology as the domain of the Technology function, like Risk or HR, and not something they need to be overly concerned with. But the transition to configurable financial services is a transition not in technology per se, but in the architecture – logical architecture – of the bank and its services. It’s about moving the entire organization away from a rigid focus on products, accounts and workflows, to one that flexibly manages smart contracts, customer event histories and abstracted services. This is a business transition not a technology function transition; and it can’t be delegated from the top team.
Incumbents have countless advantages in this new era of configurable financial services; and huge scope for putting these capabilities at the service of the financial lives of their customers. In so doing they can arrest (and reverse) the drifting away of those customers to digital disrupters. But they can also re‐discover their calling as the passionate enablers of the financial well‐being of their customers. By doing this, they would be carving out their unique place in this tech‐disrupted landscape – leveraging incumbency trust and reinventing it for the modern context. This clearly needs to be an authentic commitment to customers’ financial health – making that their primary business objective and the institutions’ true purpose.
Overcoming organizational inertia, and promoting a tech‐orientation across their organization, are leadership challenges that incumbent bank leaders need to take on if they are to become the future winners in the evolving sector. This is the real challenge and opportunity of the era of configurability; and the foundation stone for winning in the era of agentic banking that’s just ahead of us.
Alastair Campbell
July 2025
INTRODUCTION
The Global Health sector is going through a seismic transition, coming to terms with the realities of modern health and wellness. In the 19th and 20th centuries, improving health outcomes meant predominantly limiting the spread and impact of infectious diseases. One hundred years ago, the top three causes of death in the US were pneumonia, tuberculosis and gastrointestinal infections.1And the medical innovations of that generation – like hospitals and nursing and medicines – worked wonders at addressing those issues.
But in the 21st century, the leading causes of death in the US (and globally) are not infectious diseases, they are “lifestyle related” diseases – diabetes, obesity, heart disease, the effects of ageing, etc.2– which are not infectious and are not addressed through isolation, sanitation and parasite‐killing medicine.
The shift in health and illness has been remarkable, even within most of our lifetimes. In 2011, the number of people globally suffering the ill effects of overeating started to exceed those suffering from the effects of lack of nutrition, for the first time in human history.3Today, in 2024, it's estimated a billion people (one in eight globally) are obese. More generally, more people are living longer with debilitating but not immediately life‐threatening conditions, like Alzheimer's, strokes, heart disease, mental health issues, etc.
This transformation in illness and disease requires a completely different health sector from the “Florence Nightingale” model of the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of treating illness, we need increased focus on promoting wellness and providing long‐term care. This is a healthcare model for which hospitals, surgeons and medicines are, frankly, not well suited. The health sector can try to duct‐tape an additional wellness component on the side of its current mode of operation – but in the end a more fundamental root‐and‐branch rethink is required.
Now, what is true for Health may also be analogous for the Banking Sector. As banking executives think about the “bank of the future” the danger is they don't recognize the steady but fundamental nature of the changes going on around them.
Most banks recognize the digital transformation of their industry but underappreciate the seismic opportunity this represents – not just to do the same things digitally but, rather, to unlock whole new ways to be relevant to customers and their financial lives. Doing that requires new levels of ambition, but also humble introspection – to recognize the gap that exists between how banks operate today, and what it would look like if they were genuine financial life partners for their customers.
Banks, in our recent history, have been fundamentally focused around one central task – delivering maturity transformation. That is, attracting deposits (i.e., relatively small and short tenured loans from customers to the bank) and making loans to other customers (i.e., relatively longer tenured and larger loans, e.g., mortgages and corporate loans). This is at the core of how the banks' balance sheets work – generating annuity “net interest” margins from the difference between the interest income received from loan customers and the interest paid to deposit customers.
However, maturity transformation thinking dominates the incumbent banks' world view and mindset well beyond its useful boundaries within the bank's Treasury function. Internally, maturity transformation thinking dominates how banks think about the services they offer customers, how they design and architect their systems and how they measure their performance.
For example, Banks' services are defined principally on how they impact the bank's balance sheet. As a result, debit cards – for instance – are viewed as very different products to credit cards to the bank; and are often managed by completely different teams within the organization. This is entirely because they affect opposite sides of the bank's balance sheet; despite them providing pretty similar functions for customers. On the flip, banks don't think about defining their services by how they provide value to customers' financial lives – e.g., how they lubricate exchange and trust, how they protect customers from bad luck or from bad actors, how they promote and sustain good financial habits or how they help customers manage their financial relationships and their networks of financial obligations and controls, etc.
A similar challenge applies to the banks' architectures. Again, the maturity transformation mindset dominates here – this time with the banks' overbearing architectural focus on accounts. Banks' core banking platforms hardwire firm three‐way linkages – customer–product–account – right at the core of the system. And it makes total sense from a bank's balance sheet perspective to do so. The bank needs to know exactly who owes it what money, and who it owes what money to, constantly and continually. The problem is, hardwired like this around accounts, the bank's architecture is focused exclusively on understanding the customers' financial relationship with the bank, and is entirely uninterested in understanding the customers' financial relationships with anyone else but the bank.
The hardwiring of customer–product–account triads at the core of the banks' platform architectures makes it surprisingly difficult for them to do a great number of simple things that customers would value enormously: e.g., aggregate and view their overall financial position, its history and its upcoming commitments; enable them to bundle together hybrid services (fungible credit lines, usage‐based savings products, protected exchange services, etc.) that would suit their specific needs and contexts; enable them to flexibly manage their financial relationships with families, friends, colleagues and service providers; and, enable them to control their data and permissions across the bank and beyond; etc.
And finally, leadership. The banks' focus on maturity transformation has encouraged bank leadership to prize and focus on inertia within their customer base. Ideal customers maintain large, lazy balances (be they deposits or loans) for long periods of time. They stay relatively quiet – and don't expensively bother the bank's frontline with interactions or activity.
Taken to an extreme, this means customers that are actually engaging with the bank, or proactively trying to manage their financial lives, are expensive and annoying. And so, the bank views customer engagement and proactively supporting customers' financial lives with caution – as an avoidable expense; rather than as the hallmark of a healthy and mutually beneficial customer–bank relationship.
The problem, of course, with the incumbent banking sectors' singular focus on maturity transformation is this is a “means versus ends” confusion. Maturity transformation is how a bank operates within its internal engine room. It's the function of the bank's asset‐liability management committee and its all‐important Treasury team. But it's not, in itself, why banking, or more generally, effective money management services, are so incredibly valuable to customers' everyday lives.
And, as we'll argue repeatedly in this book, digitization of the banking sector isn't simply reproducing the existing industry business models digitally. Digital interactivity and embedded digital services offer the ability to unpick and remake the industry into effective financial life partners for our customers. This a profound opportunity to seize – creating a whole new level of customer value and customer engagement. It's also a profound threat if not addressed, as incumbent banks failing to step up to becoming effective financial life partners will be increasingly disintermediated by other players (banks and non‐banks) who will.
The bank of the future needs to do brilliant maturity transformation – that's a given. But it also needs to go beyond simply running a maturity transforming book. It needs to be designed around actually helping its customers sustain financially healthy lives; and helping them operate and manage their financial relationships and networks practically, every day. It needs the products, the architecture, and the leadership to enable this. And, just like the global health sector, duct‐taping these capabilities onto the existing model just won't cut it.
This crisis of relevance plays out in the evolving structural landscape of the banking sector. Banks see the symptoms of it in their growth prospects and in their stock market valuations. In the 10 years to 2022, the sector's top incumbents collectively added about 70% to their market capitalizations, according to Oliver Wyman's 2022 report.4 This growth rate translates to around 5.5% per annum, modest (given that it was a decade of recovery from recession) but positive.
But this was dwarfed by much bigger growth in new value coming from a newer class of non‐incumbent players, including the payments providers, fintechs and embedded finance players. Whilst representing only a little over 15% of the sector in 2012, they represented more than 63% of the industry's value growth (2× the incumbent's new value) over the decade since – adding perhaps $2.3trn in new value over the period (compared to only $1.2trn for all the incumbent banks combined). And they seem set to continue to dominate the growth and value growth of the sector going forward, with BigTech players also becoming an increasingly dominant sectoral force.
Source: The Tectonic Shifts in Risk, Data and Technology; The State of Financial Services Industry 2022
This is an overwhelming structural transformation – its gradually but relentlessly reshaping the entire financial services landscape. Value and relevance are migrating away from the incumbent banks to these digital/ information‐centric players in a seemingly unstoppable way. These technology‐centric providers, in the end, are doing a much better job of engaging customers and actually designing services that help customers run their financial lives.
This does not mean that incumbents' values are falling; but rather that they are not experiencing the growth of the wider sector. And that in turn is because they are not participating in the fast‐growing pools of value growth – customer digital engagement, embedded finance, new financial ecosystems – that lie outside of the traditional banks' frame of reference. They are not where the action is. Collectively, they are in danger of becoming an economic sideshow within the sector – continuing to compete tirelessly with each other, not noticing the real game is going on somewhere else.
The structural transformation has three key manifestations:
Mass Adoption of Digital‐only Neobanks
(Revolut, NuBank, Chime, Starling, Monzo, etc.) – these banks have grown their customer bases on average around 400% since 2020.
5
At time of writing (end of 2024) more than 40% of UK households have an account with a digital‐only neobank
6
(mostly as an addition to their incumbent bank not an alternative to it) and the largest neobanks are now getting bigger than any incumbent bank (e.g., ex China, the largest incumbent bank is JPM Chase with 90 m customers. By the end of 2024 – NuBank had 114 m customers, Revolut 50 m customers and Chime 38 m customers, each growing at a rate that is equivalent to doubling in size every two to three years).
Pervasive Use of Embedded Finance
(Klarna, Shopify Financial, PayPal, etc.) – In 2022, 60% of UK adults (and 80% of adults under 34 years old)
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said they had used embedded finance in the last year – typically BNPL at checkout, but also e‐wallets, auto round‐ups and embedded insurance. And Embedded Finance continues to experience explosive growth. 2024 estimates suggest the market leapt 9× since 2020; and forecasts have it continuing to growth 15–21% per annum from 2025–2033.
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Increasing Dominance of BigTech and Platform Players
(Apple Wallet, Shopify Financial, Amazon Seller Wallet, Uber Cash, etc.) – The scale and reach of these players completely dwarf any incumbent bank (e.g., as of end 2024, Apple Wallet has c.750 m customers and Shopify c.700 m customers).
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Whilst they are unlikely to ever become regulated deposit‐taking banks, they have the power to become central to the financial lives of hundreds of millions of customers – reshaping the industry completely, by default
Importantly, whilst the structural transformation in the Banking sector is the symptom of the incumbent's relevance‐malaise, it's not – we would argue – its cause. The cause, in our view, is the lack of introspection on the part of the incumbents – the lack of honest focus on remaking their services, their architecture and their leadership models around helping their customers to have healthy financial lives.
To emphasize this further – the reason that value growth will continue to migrate away from incumbent banks (despite their huge investment in digitization) is that they are letting an ever‐wider chasm grow between what they do and what their customers really need and want them to do. Customer‐centric incumbent banks often fall into the trap of focusing on trying to improve their customers' relationship with the bank; but what customers really want is an improved relationship with their money – and that's quite a different thing.
Just to be clear, society will always need maturity transformation and regulated deposit‐taking financial institutions. We just may not be that interested in paying that much for them. To expand this point – one argument against the threat of banking disruption that bank leaders often mention is that banks play a very difficult and important role in society, and that customers will continue to want them to do that. That might be true – but it still won't, in itself, deliver economic value growth for the banks.
Take telcos by comparison. For the last 20 years, the TMT (Telecoms–Media–Technology) sector has been the best‐performing sector in terms of value growth on many/most stock markets around the world. The introduction of digital mobility – of 3G, 4G and 5G technology – over the last 20 years has powerfully enriched the lives of pretty much everyone on the planet. The telcos have innovated and invested hugely to bring this connectivity within arms‐reach of us all. And the result has been enormous value growth for the TMT sector; but not for the telcos. Collectively, telco's market capitalizations have hardly grown, whilst other parts of the sector – from Google to Apple to Netflix – have seen market capitalizations explode.
Customers increasingly treat digital connectivity as the “next human right”. Digital connectivity is core to their well‐being, and amazingly technically difficult to do. But none of these truths have prevented the telco's from becoming the “dumb pipes” of the TMT sector.
