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@BrettK:

"VCs...investing in banks"? Ha ha. I thought the financial services industry invested in VC funds. 

Banks have been around for ages. Financial services is the most profitable sector in FORTUNE 500. When banks fail, the government bails them out. On the other hand, when fintech companies fail, nobody bails them out; for some fintech companies, being acquired by banks is their only way forward; for some others, continued VC funding is the only way to survive. In a frothy economy, there's nothing wrong with any of this but it's a major leap of faith to believe that banks need neobanks to survive!

@BrettK:

TY for the detailed clarification.

I never thought banking was as simple as a mobile app and always knew that it had many complications like charter, capital adequacy, KYC, cap rules and all that. I can bet that the same VCs who don't see charter as an asset in the hands of banks would call it a "deep moat" had it been in the hands of a neobank.

Since times immemorial, BFSI has been a large vertical for the IT industry. For some IT companies, BFSI is larger than all their other industry verticals put together. So, banks have always been partnering with tech providers to achieve an edge in their markets. Just that many IT companies have focused on playing the "faster, better, cheaper" card in a more finessed manner that has allowed them to operate cash positively and without VC funding.

Sorry but as far as I've experienced it, LinkedIn does not display business email addresses by default. Even people who have opted to have their email displayed generally use their personal email address. Therefore, I'm not sure how one can find out a person's business email address from their LinkedIn profile.

Furthermore, well before LI came into existence, people have been hacking company email structures (e.g. firstname.lastname@companyname.com) from CONTACT US / MEDIA RELATIONS / INVESTOR RELATIONS pages of companies' own websites. Even a search on Google - or Lycos / Alta Vista before Google was founded in ~1998 - often does the trick, as I've illustrated for a certain Top 5 UK bank here. So, why single out LinkedIn?

Launch by promising to drive banks out of business. Secure VC funding on the basis of the hype. Grow by selling company's products / services to banks. Exit by selling out company to banks. I thought that was the classical neobank playbook. Curious to know why Oracle is copying it. Oh, wait, I think I know: I got a LinkedIn message from someone recently claiming to start an exclusive Oracle VC company for funding startups.

@AlexN:

I was not hinting at any agenda-led bias. My point is more related to frame of reference and a limitation in research methodology. To continue with my example regarding method of payment / choice of channel, the way to evoke the full and correct answer is to frame the question thus: "If you're in the office with good Internet connectivity, which channel will you select for making a payment? On the other hand, if you're in your branch's neighborhood, will your answer be different?"

But not many MR agencies have the skills to recast this somewhat tricky question into a simpler one that captures the essence of the topic but can still be administered via their surveys. As a result, many surveys end up with simplistic questions masquerading as simple ones and we end up with snappy answers to stupid questions that sound paradoxical!

I don't see any paradox here. Customers simply like (or dislike!) multiple channels and if they select one channel today, it doesn't mean they'll reject all the other channels forever. It's only finsurgents and neobanks who think in terms of channel cost, "Borders" moment and "if you're not with us, you're against us".

Customers see different strengths for different channels and simply choose the one they find most suitable in any given context. From personal experience, assessment of suitability could also be very fluid: If I need to make a payment, I might choose Online Banking if I'm in the office having good Internet connectivity but choose to drop a cheque in the drop box at the branch if I'm in the neighborhood of the branch. I don't see any contradiction in any of this.

Haven't read the report itself but wonder if the survey suffers from "selection bias" - one would think that the SMB / startup target audience for Hadoop wouldn't form a bulk of Gartner's enterprise client base that is more likely to be using Business Objects, Cognos, SAS and other proprietary Big Data solutions that compete with the open-source Hadoop.

To play a little loose with an old Al Capone aphorism, Moven realizes that it can achieve a lot more with a mobile app and a bank than with a mobile app alone!

In all the 24 components, I couldn't find one related to sales. Unless banks sell  these products / services, everything else is moot. And better ability to sell is the real reason why Bankerless or Branchless Banking will not happen in the forseeable future.

Secret Of Survival Of Bank Branches

Forget delays in the disappearance of cash, I actually see it entering hitherto cashless usage scenarios e.g. ecommerce and even airline eticketing.

The Death Of Cash Is At Least 190 Years Away

Even the cashless-native Uber just announced plans to accept cash a couple of days ago.

Uber tests cash payments in India

I'm not questioning change per se but I don't believe that it's always unidirectional. Role of cash, branch and banker could sometimes swing both ways like a pendulum. The direction of change will be largely driven by the status quo. Too much branch density, like in USA? Shut down branches. Too little branch density, like in India? Open new branches. And so on.

Security and Convenience? That Holy Grail has not yet been cracked although many have tried and failed. (Banks Have Nothing To Fear From TELCOs). In recent times, Apple Pay has come closest to cracking this Holy Grail. With latest research showing that only 6% of iPhone6 users have ever used Apple Pay, it's not clear whether customers have really given their business to a vendor that provides security and convenience. Until they offer not only security and convenience but also inspire trust and roll out their own (nonbanking) rails, all wannabe competitors are either picking on business that banks have rejected or operating as resellers for banks. Either way, banks have no great reason to worry.