Reports of our death are an exaggeration: Difference between revisions

Firstly — if banking ''is'' such a cinch, ''where the hell are they''? It is 2023, for crying out loud. Wells Fargo is still with us. None of Apple, Amazon, or Google as so much as cast a wanton glance in the direction of financial services, despite the colossal revenue opportunities. ''Something'' is keeping them away.

And it’s not the regulatory issues: if it were then you would expect tech firms to be awesome at ''unregulated'' financial services.  

But — secondly — ''they’re not''.  We’ve been treated to a ten-year, live-fire experiment with how good tech firms will be in [[Cryptobabble|unregulated financial services]], during which the banks — “[[trad fi]]” — and, notably, the FAANGS have mainly stayed away, ''and it hasn’t gone well''.  

In their abstinence, [[Chauncey Gardiner|credulous cryptobros]] have found, and promptly fallen down, pretty much every open manhole known to money management — and discovered some whole new ones of their own to fall down too. Helpfully, [https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ Molly White] is keeping a running score. Crypto, despite its awesome tech and fabulous branding, has been a disaster.

====Tech brands won't survive contact with banking====

Thirdly, a company that makes cool gadgets but pivots to banking has as much chance of maintaining millennial brand loyalty  as does a toy factory  that moves into dentistry.

Those Occupy Wall Street gang? Apple fanboys.

Fourthly it is naive, to say the least, to presume that regulatory compliance is formalistic, let alone “the easy bit of banking”. If you could solve it with tech, the banks would have. Regulations change, contradict, don't make sense, overlap, are fiddly, illogical, often counterproductive and they are subject to to interpretation by regulators, who are also fiddly, illogical and not known for their constructive approach to rule enforcement. The consequences of getting regulations wrong can be enormous. Even apparently formalistic things like kyc and client asset protection. Banks already throw armies of bodies and technology<ref>are [[legaltech roll of honour]] refers.</ref> at this problem and still they are routinely find in the millions of dollars.  

But in any case Park all that. For what Mr Perez overlooks as a core competence in a successful bank is the same thing Mr Cryan did: its ''people'".  

They are the irreducible, ineffable, magic difference: the transparent ''informal'' networks by which it mysteriously navigates all kinds of terrain like some hovering, morphing jellyfish. Sundar Pichai can’t code that. The same human expertise the banks need to hold their creaking systems together, to work around their bureaucratic absurdities and still sniff out new business opportunities take a pragmatic view — this is not a bug in the system, but a feature. Neither Cryan nor Perez seems to think it exists.