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I am all for companies being very aware of where their future should lie and in many cases digitisation may well be a significant part of a journey to a better future. However, this direction seems to skew future planning to digitisation at all cost?

'The banking industry in (sic) has been dominated by a handful of big global or regional banks for 100s of years' ?? Memory serving, before Big Bang, in the mid-eigthies, there were some large banks, but certainly not global ones. And those were mostly large on a corporate business basis, retail was nice for cheap funding.

I fully agree that the need for data insight is as great in financial services as in any other data-driven industry. But I'm not sure that this approach underlines deficiencies in this regard. Is an MBA really the (only and) Holy Grail as far as data analysis is concerned? Let's also not forget that (a number of) those MBAs forgoing larger salaries for being agents of disruption, affect financial services anyway, through the influence that their disruptive technolgy roles have on the FSI industry.

Absolutely agree, Ketha!

Maybe, maybe not. In my mind the issue is not bank vs not-a-bank, one of your own 'nagging' examples is Metrobank, a licenced deposit taking institution, after all.

The issue is that the large, 'fat' banks have created, through, at least partially, unfocussed expansion into the periphery of what used to be their core business, an opportunity for 'better mousetraps'.

As you indicate, it will not kill, them (at least not yet), but it forces them to rethink their business model: what business to be in (and even the core may be questioned here), and then fully committed to win, and what businesses to leave to the ants and various other creepy crawlies. And this needs to be synergy driven, ie which business support and enhance the core vs which do not. Since nimbleness by new entrants at the periphery will always be a significant threat in those areas, those choices need to be razor sharp.

So much for the analogies!

How very true! And, considering how we all live our lives, how much 'branch time' can any of us really afford anyway?

The one channel that served many of us well, long before we had ever heard of Internet, web 2.0 and what all, the telephone, has been effectively made inaccessible/unusable by call centres and other voice activated nonsense (maybe the branch still has a role in that it prossibly takes less tme to visit one than it takes to work your way through one of these telephone horrors?).

Proper phone access to the right resource would go a long way towards helping customers when (and where) they need it. Particularly in your example and cases similar (there are many), why bother with time pressure, traffic pressure and whatever other pressure, if a quick and 'clean' call channeling effort could get the help in the form of either advice or execution in minutes?

@ Nick Green:

If the shopper does not have to unload his/her trolley (as stated in the article), your points 1 and 4 don not make sense?

They're here already!

Refreshing! As long as too many banks still cannot get the basics right (booking the correct items at the right time, delivering reasonably understandable overviews of this and being there when the customer needs them to be, with enough readily available 'knowledge' to serve the customer's basic purpose), let them please concentrate on that, rather than creating 'dazzle' to hide the fact that the basics ain't workin'! 

Surprisingly, such an instrument already exists: it called a CHEQUE

George: I could not agree more, data intelligence is the key to competitive differentiation and future business success, and certainly not only in transaction banking, although that seems to be one of the lesser explored areas in this regard.

A drum worth continuing being beaten!