A letter to bank boards and CEOs
I have spent decades watching banks declare victory over the future, only to be surprised by it again and again.
I was there when ATMs were supposed to make branches obsolete.
When internet banking was going to end human interaction.
When mobile banking was the final chapter.
When fintechs were declared existential threats.
When blockchain was going to eliminate banks altogether.
None of those things happened in the way predicted. And yet, banking has been permanently altered – quietly, structurally, and irreversibly.
The real danger for banks is not obsolescence of things.
It is obsolescence of assumptions.
The Banking Industry Has Always Been Slow – Until It Isn’t
Banking does not change like consumer technology. It changes like geology – under pressure, over time, and then suddenly.
For decades, we optimized for scale, stability, and predictability. That model worked because the world was relatively linear. Customers behaved predictably. Risk could be priced historically. Regulation moved slowly. Technology evolved incrementally.
That world is gone.
Today, banking sits at the intersection of four forces that do not respect legacy institutions:
- Exponential technology
- Platform-based economics
- Radically shifting customer trust
- Regulation struggling to keep pace
When those forces align, what disappears first is not infrastructure—but relevance.
What Is Truly Becoming Obsolete
Let us be precise, because boards must be.
1. Branches Are Not Dying. Their Purpose Is.
I have closed branches. I have defended branches. I have redesigned them. I have sat in boardrooms where they were treated as either sacred temples or embarrassing liabilities.
Both views are wrong.
What is obsolete is the idea that branches are transaction engines.
Branches built for cash handling, form filling, queues, and routine servicing belong to a world that no longer exists. They were designed for a time when distribution was power.
Today, distribution is digital.
Trust is the scarce asset.
The future physical presence of a bank is smaller, rarer, and more intentional. It is about:
- Legitimacy in moments of consequence
- Human reassurance when stakes are high
- Regulatory comfort
- Brand embodiment
Boards should not ask, “How many branches do we need?“
They should ask, “What moments still require us to be human?“
2. Banking “Hours” Reflect an Industrial-Era Mindset
Why do banks still close?
Not because customers require it.
Because organizations do.
Opening hours, working hours, and service windows are artifacts of internal convenience, not customer reality.
In the next five years, banks will be expected to function as always-on institutions, not in staffing, but in system reliability. Humans will not disappear, but they will intervene only when machines encounter ambiguity, ethics, or exception.
This will force an uncomfortable truth:
Many banking organizations are still designed around people, not systems.
That design is becoming obsolete.
3. Cash, Cards, and the Illusion of a Clean Break
Cash will not vanish everywhere. Anyone who has lived through financial crises knows why. When systems fail, electricity disappears, or trust evaporates, cash reasserts itself.
But cash as a primary medium is fading in developed markets. Cards, too, are dissolving – no longer objects, but credentials embedded into identity, devices, and software.
What is becoming obsolete is not money, but the way banks imagine their relationship to it.
Money is becoming:
- Programmable
- Contextual
- Invisible
- Embedded
Banks that still think in terms of products (accounts, cards, loans) are already behind.
4. Security Theater Is Ending
I have approved vaults. I have signed off on armored vehicles. I have sat through security audits that mistook visibility for effectiveness.
Much of what we call “security” in traditional banking is ritual, not protection.
Passwords, PINs, stamps, wet signatures, physical documents – these were reasonable controls in a physical world. In a digital ecosystem, they are friction masquerading as safety.
But let me be clear:
Security itself is not becoming obsolete. It is becoming systemic.
The real threats now are:
- Model risk in AI decisioning
- Data integrity and poisoning
- Cyber warfare, not cybercrime
- Dependency on third-party platforms
- Regulatory exposure from opaque algorithms
Boards should lose sleep not over branch robberies, but over unseen correlations buried in code.
5. Roles Will Disappear. Judgment Will Not.
Many traditional roles will vanish:
- Tellers
- Manual credit officers
- Tier-1 call center agents
- Back-office processors
This is inevitable.
But the assumption that banks can simply replace them with technologists is dangerously naive.
The future belongs to hybrid professionals – people who understand:
- Risk and data
- Regulation and engineering
- Customers and systems
Institutions that treat this as a headcount exercise will hollow themselves out.
The Most Important Obsolescence: The Front-End Illusion
Perhaps the most provocative idea is that banks will become invisible infrastructure – licensed balance sheets powering other brands.
This is not wrong. But it is incomplete.
Some banks will choose this path deliberately – and succeed as regulated utilities.
Others will fight to retain the customer relationship by owning:
- Identity
- Context
- Financial orchestration across life events
Both strategies can work.
What will not work is pretending you can be both a utility and a lifestyle brand without making hard choices.
Indecision is becoming obsolete.
What Boards Must Confront Now
The next five years will not be defined by technology adoption. They will be defined by institutional courage.
Boards must ask themselves:
- Are we designing for stability or for adaptability?
- Do we understand our future role – or are we defending our past one?
- Are we governed for a slower world than the one we now inhabit?
- Do we still believe regulation will protect us from irrelevance?
Because history is unkind to institutions that mistake longevity for inevitability.
A Final Thought
Banks have survived wars, depressions, technological revolutions, and societal upheavals not because they were fast, but because they were trusted.
Trust, however, is no longer inherited.
It is continuously earned.
The next era of banking will not eliminate banks.
It will eliminate those who confuse what they have always done with why they exist.
Obsolescence is manageable.
Irrelevance is terminal.
And the difference between the two will be decided, not by technology, but by the choices boards make now.
This is not about predicting the future.
It is about being fit for it.
