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Then you should also beg to differ with your own post. Your post raises concerns about delays caused by "security polices,..." but your comment seems to accept delays caused by "security clearances", etc. Besides, I don't see any mention in your post of your concerns about delays caused by lax culture, ingrained inertia, etc., which are mentioned only in your comment?

Anyway, as I said before, "I'm glad banks are making it hard for startups to access their production systems." I really don't care why that's the case.

Startups are driven by credos like "fail fast", "iterate", and so on. While okay for selling t-shirts, apples and oranges, a typical startup approach is catastrophic while handling money. I'm glad banks are making it hard for startups to access their production systems. And, in any case, I haven't come across a single earth-shattering product from a fintech that'd make me want to rush to get it.

CX is not a key component of improving customer experience. CX is Customer Experience:)

UX and CX are restricted to existing channels only in the old-school multichannel way of thinking.

Modern omnichannel banking recognizes that customers don't think in terms of channels and that channel hopping is a feature for today's customer, not bug. With that recognition, omnichannel banking accepts existing systems as they are, lets each channel play to its strengths, and uses connectors to let an end-to-end customer journey hop across multiple channels in a way that enhances UX and CX.

No, my context was not just neobanks. It was banks as well.

IMO, you're confusing banks with non-profits.

1. Yes, imparting financial literacy to Millennials is a noble goal but what's in for banks?
2. Yes, making Millennials save more with intelligent financial apps is a noble goal. But the moment banks - or even nonbank fintechs like Digit - try to levy a fee for the service, the same Millennials rise up in arms to protest against the fee. So what's in it for banks to provide such apps? 
3. Intelligent financial apps - aka PFM / MoMMAs - have been around for nearly 10 years but they've still not contributed in any significant way to a bank's revenues or profits. 

I could go on and on but my point is this: Right or wrong, moral or immoral, the highly profitable business model of banks is predicated upon going where the money is, not where the money is needed. The last time the government urged them to change that model and go where the money is needed was the root cause of the GFC.

As the old saying goes, "A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." And Millennials can't.

Maybe my sarcasm was too subtle because I meant exactly the opposite: Better never than late.

Many assumptions made by neobanks about Millennials have turned out to be false. Fact is: (1) 60%+ wealth is in the hands of Baby Boomers (2) Millennials have taken a huge amount of student loans from traditional loans. Whether they like traditional banks or not, they can't escape traditional banks. The more relevant question is whether traditional banks want to deal with broke Millennials (3) Millennials have poor adoption of mobile payments despite high adoption of mobile phones and mobile banking (Source: Financial Brand). 

As a result, neobanks have been struggling to grow and achieve any meaningful market share. Far from disrupting traditional banks, neobanks have started chanting the bank-fintech partnership in an attempt to prolong their survival. If banks had taken the advice of finsurgents' advice about targeting millennials, they would've been in a bad shape today. Thankfully, they didn't do that and therefore continue to go laughing all the way to the - ahem - bank.

Today's banks? Actually finsurgents preached to banks to become more Millennial-centric 3-4 years ago. Then fintechs focused on Millennials started going out of business one by one. Thankfully, banks didn't take that advice. Will Millennials Bankrupt Neobanks?

Blockchain is just the solution for consent. Not just of the nature handled by LegalFlings app 😉 but also for the consent involved in sharing of banking data with third parties under Open Banking.

When you have half a product across one and a half channels, it's not so hard to provide a seamless cross-product, cross-channel experience. It's only when the Starlings and Monzos of the world go beyond their checking account / PFM offerings to become full-service banks that the rubber will hit the road. Only then will they realize that a single platform is not such a great advantage as it's made out to be. 

Banks shouldn't get diverted by that noise. After all, they've operated multiple platforms on different technologies for decades and have still provided cross-channel products / services e.g. (1) ATM cash withdrawal via Java ATM Switch talking to Mainframe Core System (2) Mobile Banking via Android App talking to God-knows how many diverse systems at the middle and backend. It's not a big deal for them to support QRC ATM cash withdrawal via Mobile Banking or Instant Credit at POS - in fact, I know some who already do.

To me, merely providing cross-product, cross-channel products / services is neither difficult nor such a big deal from consumer p.o.v. What is difficult and a big deal from consumer p.o.v is delivering good enough UX and CX. And that's equally well a problem on a single product, single platform, single technology stack as on multi product, multi platform, multi technology stacks.

I've been highlighting this for years and, at last, I'm happy to learn from Financial Brand recently that "Remove Friction from Customer Journey" has finally become the #1 imperative of Retail Banks in USA for 2018. Hope retail banks all over the world follow suit.

Frankly, everything else is noise.

Kudos to METRO Bank. Its approach totally resonates with the increasingly omnichannel banking journey preferred by customers. On a side note, for all the predictions of end of swipe and plastic with iPhone 5, iPhone X has come and swipe and plastic happen to be the only physical things in Metro Bank's digital account!

I looked up Raiden Network. It sounds interesting but it seems to be focused only on payments. Would it be useful for executing Smart Contracts off-chain, which is the requirement for Etherisc? 

One more $0.02 on UX: Now that you've confirmed that your actual insurance product is currently not in production, you might want to explore the option of prepopulating the credit card fields on the current Ropsten testnet with the test card so that people don't unnecessarily disclose their real credit card info.

I also looked up your Telegram Channel. You might see me there soon!