Reinventing Banks … banking is being reshaped by technology, but the disruption is more profound than digitalisation … it demands a fundamental reimagination of why banks exist, how they work, and add value

July 9, 2025

The bank of the future will need to embrace emerging technology, remain flexible to adopt evolving business models, and put customers at the centre of every strategy.

But that’s probably not enough …

Indeed, the bank might need to think even more radically, in order to be relevant in a rapidly changing world – a new world where smartphones are payment devices, and crypto seeks to become king.

Credit and debit cards have already replaced cash as the preferred payment tool. Only 29% of American consumers prefer to use cash over a card when paying for a good or service. While cash’s popularity has been decreasing, the rise of government-backed digital currency will be highly disruptive. Fast, simple, borderless.

So what is the role of a bank in the future, whether physical or digital?

Walking into a bank in the future might be drastically different, mainly because the customer might be the only human inside the building. Through AI and robotics, the banks of the future will be able to operate without any human assistance. 65% of banking executives believe that zero-human banking will become a reality in the future. And some banks are already testing human-less banks. The China Construction Bank has already launched a personless bank branch where everything is run by humanoid robots.

Perhaps DBS has the right idea …

The Singapore-based bank, ranked the world’s most innovative for many years, wants to “make banking invisible”. By bringing together an ecosystem of partners who are even more relevant and trusted by customers, it can embed finance into everyday life.

“Bank less, live more” … as they say.

Or consider Nubank, the digital bank from Brazil, that has gained 100 million new customers since launching 10 years ago with only a payment card. It has been on a mission to reach the unbanked, a huge part of populations in emerging markets, and offering a relevant portfolio of financial products, including education and support. Gamification has been a key engagement tool, learning how money works, and can work for you and your family, through digital simulations and games on your phone.

Megatrends shaking up banking, and beyond

Megatrends are disrupting every industry, including those once thought to be largely unaffected by new technologies. The shifts over the next 10 years will be profound. As examples:

Digitization has transformed music from physical products (vinyl, CDs) into streaming experiences. Spotify doesn’t sell songs; it sells moods, discovery, and personalization. Banking too will move from rigid products to seamless financial experiences.
Democratization has reshaped retail. Platforms like Shopify and TikTok empower anyone to become a merchant or influencer. The power is shifting from institutions to individuals. In finance, democratization means fintech apps that let people invest, trade, and borrow without a traditional bank.
Personalization has redefined travel. Airbnb offers not just rooms but customized experiences, curated through data and algorithms. For banking, personalization means moving beyond one-size-fits-all products to services tailored to individual life goals.
Sustainability is transforming professional services. Leading consultancies and law firms now advise on ESG, inclusion, and climate strategy, recognizing clients expect impact beyond profit. For banks, sustainability will define lending portfolios, risk models, and purpose.

These examples reveal a profound truth: markets are no longer about selling standardized products within rigid sectors. They are becoming customer-centric spaces—health, mobility, wealth, learning—where solutions are fluid, integrated, and often invisible.

Why banks are not fit for the future

Traditional banks struggle to adapt to this new reality. Their weaknesses are structural:

They are product-centric—mortgages, credit cards, savings accounts—rather than customer-centric.
They are bound by legacy IT systems and compliance-heavy cultures that slow down innovation.
They are focused on risk avoidance rather than value creation.

Worse, banks face a deeper existential problem: their core functions—moving money, safeguarding deposits, assessing risk, and allocating capital—can now be done by algorithms, platforms, and protocols. AI can underwrite credit instantly. Blockchain can move assets across borders in seconds. Platforms like Revolut or Nubank deliver financial services without the bureaucracy of traditional banks.

Just as music labels lost control to streaming platforms, or travel agents vanished in the age of Expedia and Airbnb, banks face the risk of becoming irrelevant intermediaries—utilities in the background of ecosystems they no longer control.

Thinking differently

Banks have traditionally looked inward for inspiration—benchmarking peers, regulators, or fintechs. But to truly reinvent themselves, they should look to unexpected innovators in culture and technology.

Take Taylor Swift. She has reinvented herself repeatedly across genres and eras, owning her narrative and deepening emotional bonds with fans. The “Eras Tour” is more than music; it’s an immersive experience and community. For banks, the lesson is that reinvention is not just about products—it’s about storytelling, transparency, and belonging. Just as Swift re-recorded her masters to reclaim ownership, banks could help customers reclaim ownership of their data and financial future, turning dry transactions into empowering journeys.

Or consider Roblox, the gaming platform where users create, trade, and interact in virtual worlds. It thrives on co-creation and ecosystems, not top-down control. Banking could move from closed systems to open, participatory platforms where customers, fintechs, and even communities co-create value—whether in the metaverse, through programmable money, or shared investment spaces.

Other inspiring parallels abound. Lego rebuilt itself by listening to fans, opening its innovation process, and turning into a collaborative platform for creativity. Banks could follow, letting customers shape services, from personalized savings “quests” to community-driven lending. Patagonia shows how purpose-led reinvention can build trust and resilience; banks could embed sustainability and ethical finance at the core, not the periphery.

The common thread? These innovators put people, participation, and purpose at the heart of reinvention. They treat audiences as collaborators, not passive consumers. If banks could learn to think like a pop star, a gaming platform, or a purpose-driven brand, they could transform themselves from bureaucratic utilities into living, adaptive, customer-centric ecosystems.

Reimagining money

If megatrends continue to accelerate, what replaces banks? Three radical models emerge:

1. The AI Money OS

An intelligent operating system manages your entire financial life. You tell it your aspirations—buying a home, retiring early—and it orchestrates everything: saving, investing, insuring, paying. It reallocates resources dynamically and negotiates across providers. Think of ChatGPT for your finances: autonomous, adaptive, personalized. In this model, you don’t “use a bank”; you trust an AI financial companion.

2. The Embedded Finance Mesh

Finance dissolves into everyday life. Paying for groceries automatically adjusts your budget. Renting an electric car auto-finances itself based on usage. Insurance is bundled into travel apps. Social platforms double as payment systems. In this model, banking disappears into the mesh of experiences. Nubank, Revolut, and Apple Pay hint at this future, but big tech ecosystems could make it universal.

3. The Decentralized Wealth Commons

Communities pool, lend, and invest directly through decentralized finance (DeFi). Trust lies in protocols, not institutions. Smart contracts replace bankers. Imagine neighborhood credit unions run on-chain, with AI governance ensuring fairness. In this world, the very concept of a “bank” becomes obsolete.

Inspired by pioneering peers

Some organizations already glimpse the future:

DBS talks about “invisible banking”—embedding finance seamlessly into life’s moments.
Nubank disrupted Latin America by offering simplicity, transparency, and fairness to customers exploited by traditional banks.
Revolut is building a financial super-app: payments, crypto, insurance, investments, all in one interface.
Apple shows how non-banks can dominate finance by leveraging trust, design, and integration. Millions use Apple Pay and Apple Card without thinking of them as “banking.”

The lesson is clear: the most transformative financial services may not come from banks at all.

The big shifts

Are banks doomed? Not if they are willing to reinvent themselves radically. Reinvention requires:

Shifting from products to platforms: Don’t just sell loans or cards—curate ecosystems like “housing journeys” or “mobility solutions” that integrate finance with life goals.
Owning the trust layer: In a world of AI and decentralized systems, banks could reposition as the guarantors of security, ethics, and fairness. Trust may be their last—and greatest—asset.
Partnering with big tech and fintechs: Rather than fighting Apple or Amazon, banks can provide the regulated backbone while tech partners deliver user experiences.
Radical transparency and purpose: Future customers will demand values-driven finance—carbon-neutral, inclusive, fair. Reinvention means putting purpose at the heart of business models.
Becoming AI-powered organisms: Banks must evolve from bureaucracies into intelligent systems that learn, adapt, and anticipate customer needs.

Leading the change

Leadership is the critical differentiator. To reinvent, leaders must shift their mindset:

From ownership to orchestration: Banking’s future is about co-creating ecosystems, not controlling customers.
From safety to experimentation: Standing still is now the riskiest strategy. Leaders must embrace experimentation and fast learning.
From scarcity to abundance: In digital finance, value comes not from scarcity but from personalization, trust, and insight.
From institutions to intelligence: Reimagine banks as intelligent, adaptive systems that think and act in real time for customers.
From sectors to spaces: Stop defining banking as a narrow sector. Instead, think about wealth, health, mobility, or learning as integrated customer spaces where finance plays an enabling role.

Reinvention or irrelevance

The megatrends of digitization, democratization, personalization, and sustainability are shaking every market—and banking is no exception. The question is not whether finance will change, but whether banks will be part of that change.

The future of banking may not be about banks at all. It may be about AI Money OS systems, embedded finance meshes, or decentralized wealth commons. It may be about fintech super-apps or tech giants embedding finance invisibly into daily life.

Traditional banks still have assets—scale, regulation, and trust—but they must reinvent radically to stay relevant. They must move beyond products to experiences, from intermediaries to platforms, from risk-averse bureaucracies to adaptive, intelligent systems.

The winners will not be those who protect the past, but those who embrace the future—who recognize that the world doesn’t need “banks” so much as it needs better ways to enable people to live, thrive, and achieve their aspirations.

For leaders, the choice is stark: reinvent or disappear.

Banking innovators around the world

In India, Jio, the lifestyle brand developed by Reliance Industries, has become a leading financial player. From energy to entertainment, grocery shopping and restaurant meals, the superapp has demonstrated not just the power of digital-enabled and data-driven convergence, but also the speed of disruption in markets.

While most super apps like WeChat and Grab in Asia, or Rappi in Latin America, have thrived on rides and food delivery, finance is the real driver. It’s no surprise then, that from WeChat, emerges WeBank (see below).

Financial super apps are ecosystems that enable users to access a wide variety of financial services under a single and unified platform. Instead of having to log into several apps, users will be able to sign into one super app, which pulls all these different services and lets customers maneuver everything from a “central hub”.

Legacy banks are struggling to see the wood from the trees. They are complex monoliths full of legacy systems, and legacy mindsets. Using technology to provide hyper-personalized products/services will be critical to the survival of traditional financial institutions.

72% of consumers view personalization as “highly important” for their banking experience. Some financial institutions have already started to embrace personalization. The Bank of Ireland recently announced its plans to become the “Netflix of Banking”.

“Netflix of Banking” refers to an initiative to implement AI and data science to better understand its customers’ preferences and make more precise product/service recommendations based on that information. As personalization becomes more advanced and common, dealing with a financial institution should feel like “working with a close friend”.

Länsförsäkringar, a Swedish bank, is trying to launch a Personal Finance Management solution that uses data to analyze their customers’ spending habits in real-time. Then, they will use this information to provide on-the-spot finance tips. Banks will continue to pursue this concept mainly because it makes sense financially.

Some estimates claim that for every $100 billion in assets, a bank can increase its revenue by as much as $300 million. In other words, a bank with $500 billion in assets can potentially increase its revenue by $1.5 billion through personalization initiatives.

Here are some more examples of banking innovations from around the world:

WeBank … social banking in China

WeBank, owned by the Chinese technology and social-media conglomerate Tencent, is an example of a commerce marketplace specialist (CMS) that leverages the strengths of big tech, especially network effects.

Tencent owns both one of the largest social-media companies and one of the largest video game companies in the world. Its instant-messaging apps WeChat and QQ have about 1.3 billion and 570 million monthly active users, respectively. Tencent is also changing how people access banking through WeBank.

WeBank’s strategy is built upon “the three As.” Its services are easily “accessible” via 24/7 mobile banking. They are “affordable” enough to appeal to underbanked demographics. It uses big data to target “appropriate” products and services for different customers and reduce risks to the bank. WeBank leverages the gigantic customer base and data from the Tencent ecosystem.

WeBank offers preapproved loans to qualifying users of QQ and WeChat, based on proprietary credit scores generated from Tencent data. The bank’s algorithm draws a customer portrait by analyzing many kinds of customer behaviors—what and how much a user buys, what games they play, whom they interact with on QQ and WeChat, and more—up to 200 different variables per customer.

Citibanamex … personalised engagement in Mexico

Citi operates in Mexico as Citibanamex, the second-largest bank in the country. In 2023, Citibanamex released several outstanding consumer banking innovations to improve user experience (UX). These include micro animations, messages, and its new user login splash page on its financial app.

“Our innovative mobile dashboard leverages cutting-edge UX techniques, including animated cards that dynamically display crucial information such as account balances, investment fund earnings through animated charts, and personalized offers enhanced with custom animations,” says Rosario Valdivia, Citibanamex’s CIO. “Additionally, we introduced app functionalities with animated tutorials, making complex processes simple and accessible, thereby enriching user engagement and satisfaction.”

The bank’s 360 Smart Client Hub provides personalized omnichannel customer journeys powered by artificial intelligence (AI). It uses real-time triggers to facilitate interactions, and a suite of management tools to boost operational efficiency and productivity.

“By harnessing insights from our customers through custom machine-learning models, we can meticulously analyze feedback to prioritize our digital channels backlog, provide live-moment relevant products and services, and improve our fraud detection systems,” Valdivia adds. “This approach not only enhances our responsiveness but also accelerates the delivery of tailored, value-driven solutions that elevate the customer experience to unprecedented levels. The next step is the adoption of generative AI to increase our capabilities further.”

HSBC … world’s first multicurrency digital bond

HSBC delivered the world’s first multicurrency digital bond offering in February 2024. In addition to being a game-changer for future digital bond issuances, this was the largest-ever digital bond deal. It generated investor demand unprecedented to date for a digital bond—with over 50 global investors. The multicurrency digital bond issuance included the US dollar, Chinese offshore renminbi, Hong Kong dollar, and the euro. It also stood out for the use by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s central securities depository, the Central Moneymarkets Unit, of the bank’s digital assets platform, HSBC Orion.

Meanwhile, the bank has implemented Project Ascend, a scalable first for the industry portfolio nonpayment insurance offering for trade finance assets. Partnering with three leading global insurers and insurance broker Marsh, HSBC has created a granular pool of diversified midmarket enterprise (MME) and small and midsize enterprise (SME) trade loans in Hong Kong. The insurance companies provide pro rata nonpayment insurance on the entire pool of loans without the need to underwrite individual loans for individual companies, helping them to gain more exposure to trade finance in a diversified manner. While HSBC retains certain uninsured exposure on these loans, the solution makes lending to MMEs and SMEs more attractive, as the bank now can efficiently distribute its risk and free up capital.

ING … genAI chatbot in Netherlands

Since ING launched a generative AI (genAI) chatbot in September 2023, thousands of the bank’s customers have interacted with it. It’s the first of its kind, as a customer-facing pilot conducted in Europe. Working as a team with global consultancy McKinsey, it took just seven weeks to build and deploy the service. Having created a path to double the performance of the chatbot in the subsequent six months, ING plans to build a scalable model that can be extended to all other ING countries and to set up a technical foundation for ING to address a comprehensive set of genAI use cases across the group. The pilot study helped define a blueprint to scale across 10 markets, with the potential to impact more than 37 million customers across 40 countries, far outpacing previous industry-standard chatbots that can take several years of programming and fine-tuning to get into shape.

Santander … cloud-defying gravity from Spain

By migrating its corporate and investment banking business to a new cloud-based digital banking platform, Gravity, Santander can now benefit from parallel processing. This enables it to run workloads on its existing core banking mainframe and the cloud simultaneously, allowing the bank to perform real-time testing without disrupting any of its businesses. Once satisfied with the new system’s stability and performance, the bank can transition from the mainframe system to the cloud.

Gravity allows Santander to deploy on both private and public clouds. Having successfully migrated all its commercial customers in the UK and its consumer business in Chile without any service interruption, Santander plans to relocate most of its core banking worldwide to the Gravity platform by the end of 2024, mostly in its private cloud.

“The Santander CIB migration to the cloud is a new milestone in the group’s transformation toward a simpler, more integrated model, contributing to enhanced profitability,” Dirk Marzluf, Santander’s chief operating and technology officer, said in a statement.

Santander CIB manages over a million accounting operations and half a million treasury operations daily on the cloud via the Gravity platform. Santander estimates that the Gravity platform will operate more than a trillion technical executions within the bank’s systems every year.

Nedbank … fast and collaborative in Africa

Nedbank Mozambique reinvented how it services customers with its client-oriented structure for the brand, people, branches, processes and systems. This strategy has been the pillar of Nedbank Mozambique’s success, growth and unique positioning in the market.

Among the arrows in the bank’s quiver is NedSnap, a robotic process automation (RPA) platform that supports Nedbank’s employees by facilitating more-effective communication and timely results. This floating widget provides immediate visual feedback for a more-efficient user experience and enables different bank departments to generate chained tasks for more-seamless and effective operations.

Other tools include Miyo, which is designed to work with ChatGPT. It provides intelligent analysis and insight on business statistics and strategic decision-making. It processes questions in natural language and converts them to structured query language (SQL) queries so that users can access relevant information without navigating complex datasets.

NedDocs is the bank’s software offering that streamlines document analysis and validation with optical character recognition (OCR) technology and a natural-language processing model. This solution integrates with RPA systems to automate document workflows.

DBS … AI applied to everything in Asia

More global banks are screening new clients these days, and one way they do this is by surfing the internet for potential bad news about a would-be customer. It’s usually a tedious, time-consuming process. DBS Bank, however, recently developed a new generative AI (genAI) tool for adverse-news screening that sifts through vast amounts of information rapidly and with heightened accuracy. It has already saved the bank the equivalent of five full-time employees across Singapore and neighboring regions. It has also shortened customer onboarding times and broadened risk coverage.

DBS also unveiled a new AI-based fraud-detection tool in 2023 that couples a high-tech machine learning algorithm with a more traditional rule-based detection engine. This has improved the bank’s precision and its capture rate by 50%.

The bank continues to innovate in the payments sector, too, including a cross-border QR payment linkage launched last year that lets consumers make real-time retail payments between Singapore and Southeast Asian countries by simply scanning the overseas merchants’ QR codes.

Tatra Banka … idea management platform from Slovakia

Tatra banka is usually quick to adopt emerging technologies, and this past year was no exception. It became Slovakia’s first bank to offer digital account opening and digital loans to non-clients through a process that relies heavily on biometrics. Launched in May 2023, the new process had onboarded more than 30,000 new users by year end.

The bank encourages its employees to generate new ideas, and they do so—so many that Tatra recently implemented IDEApp. This idea-management platform employs an AI digital assistant to help collect, evaluate, prioritize and report ideas. This enables staff to know who’s doing what and to track an innovation’s stage of development.

The bank also recently developed a tool to combat voice phishing, or “vishing,” in which fraudsters call consumers demanding important information in the bank’s name. Its anti-vishing protocol uses a push notification sent to a client’s phone with a unique code to prove the agent’s identity.

BTG Pactual … digital assets in Brazil

In recent years, Banco BTG Pactual developed a digital platform to leverage opportunities in Latin America. BTG Dol is the bank’s entrée into digital assets. This dollar-pegged stablecoin bridges the gap between digital and fiat currencies and is a reserve of value for economies experiencing volatility. BTG has a background in cash and reserve management, and integrating this expertise with blockchain technology has helped elevate BTG Dol as a stablecoin with a higher level of trust and security than existing stablecoins.

BTG is also focused on its environmental solution strategy: first with its impact-oriented reforestation investment strategy in Latin America; and lately, with its minority investment in Systemica, a developer of carbon-reduction projects. With this investment, the bank aims to have a more technical branch to support investments in the carbon markets and environmental assets. Systemica’s CarbonSpore platform provides an online tool that manages and develops carbon-asset generation projects while monitoring deforestation in legal reserves and permanent preserves.

Mashreq … reaching India from UAE

Mashreq’s innovation launches in 2023 were as varied as they are impressive. They included a nonresident platform for digital account opening with an Indian partner bank, allowing Indian customers, and very soon other nationalities, in the United Arab Emirates to open an account from the UAE in less than 10 minutes; a leasing platform for the real estate industry; inclusive wealth management services; an automation platform for trade asset sell down with predictive analytics and machine learning; real-time data-streaming analytics for contextual banking; an agency desk automation solution for syndicated loans; and a carbon-footprint calculator.

The bank also excelled with AI innovations, becoming the first bank in the region to release an integrated AI solution for hyperpersonalized insights to improve client experience and revenue growth by identifying opportunities and threats within portfolios. Corporate banking relationship managers, meanwhile, can benefit from an AI-based transaction deviation and early-warning signal system.

Bank of America … digital intelligence

Bank of America (BofA) is a leader in technological and digital innovation. The bank leverages its annual technology investments and corporate culture to support clients’ financial needs through improved user experience and products. As a mark of the bank’s progress, in 2023 its clients had a record 23.4 billion digital interactions, an 11% increase year over year.

BofA enhanced its digital banking platform with CashPro Data Intelligence, combining a client’s historical data with advanced analytics to suggest actionable insights, and benchmarking various areas. CashPro Developer Studio provides a solution for flexible, quick integration with instant issuance of application programming interface (API) sandbox credentials and production access. CashPro Chat enhancements extend the bank’s advanced virtual assistant to commercial clients.

“Client experience is very much front and center of our technology, and CashPro Chat now includes the same proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities behind Erica—the company’s virtual financial assistant—so our corporate clients can submit queries and get real-time answers,” says Andrew McKibben, international head of technology at BofA.

CaixaBank … Spanish CX

CaixaBank pioneered lifestyle banking before most banks woke up to the need to integrate the banking experience with customers’ lives. The bank made several meaningful improvements throughout 2023 to improve customer journeys.

These include a custom-pricing simulator, which provides a first-mortgage offer with a personalized price in real time; an option whereby customers can use the website and the CaixaBankNow app to aggregate and view their pension plans held with other entities; a digitized will-making service; and the instant payment of taxes, rates, and fines via the Spanish mobile payment service Bizum.

To ensure it meets customer needs, CaixaBank guarantees that all digital products launched on the market have been tested, iterated and validated by actual customers—minimizing risks and improving the user experience without affecting time to market. CaixiaBank also established a Mobile Experience Lab—where employees can experiment with the market’s newest devices and gadgets and perform specific tests on their applications and those of third parties.

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