Former Barclays chief executive believes its the end of the banking world as we know it…and he feels fine.
Antony Jenkins, who founded fintech firm 10x Future Technologies in 2016, has written for Quartz that financial services is in the middle of its “Uber moment”.
He refers to the closure of at least a third of bank branches in the UK in the last five years, and says “we should rejoice that the practices of banking models of the past, which have lost the trust of so many, are coming to an end”.
It’s an oft-repated cry from Jenkins, who has become a passionate advocate of the need for radical tech-driven change in traditional banking practices.
Citing challengers in the UK like Monzo and Starling and the visually appealing, fun-to-use tech platforms they offer, he sees banking moving to a “golden age” with a customer-first approach and streamlined services.
Just as Uber has negated the need for the intermediary of a taxi company or licensed body, technology such as distributed ledgers spreads the risk of a financial transaction and expedites the processes weighed down by centralised risk.
He uses as an example the idea of mortgages that can be approved in minutes thanks to AI and funded by a pension that uses blockchain to exchange the relevant data and create a smart contract.
Jenkins was group CEO of Barclays from 2012 until mid-2015, when he was sacked over a dispute with the bank’s board about restructuring and cost cutting.
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