Leda Writes for Fintech Futures: In defence of bankers

Every Thursday, Leda Glyptis, 11:FS Chief of Staff creates #LedaWrites. This week she's defending bankers.

I was recently asked, half in jest I think, to write a piece on the factors that suspend natural selection in the case of bankers.

A little harsh. But funny.

It gave me pause. And that is a good thing. Anything that makes you think is a good thing.

Traditional banking is a slightly entitled business, there is no denying that. It’s been going strong long enough for folks to forget it’s not a given.

Technology emerges. Habits form. Businesses transform. Expectations evolve.

And yet our bankers are, largely, unchanged. A case, you might think, of arrested development.

And yet. It’s not their fault.

Bear with me.

It would be a blatant lie to suggest banking hasn’t changed in 150 years. It has. The challenge is that up until now, the industry evolved. Now it has to transform. Faster than natural selection can do its thing. Faster than most organisms can adapt Faster than the average banker can learn and unlearn while also doing the thing they’ve been doing all along.

It’s not their entitlement that holds them back.

It’s the speed of change, the multitude of stimuli and inputs, the sheer volume of things one could learn and the hard choices of what to actually learn while also doing the job and picking the kids up from school.

Sure they grumbled and resisted and tried to side step. Wouldn’t you?

But in reality they are at a loss. Banking is changing and it is also desirable.

This industry is packed with a silent army of skilled folks who are not at the helm. They are not making decisions. They are not seeing the fast-approaching pivot on the horizon. They don’t know how to help themselves, what to learn, where to look, how to future-proof their livelihood. And they are not fat cats.

A new kind of banker is emerging. And it is up to us whether we take them into the future and give them a future.

Read the whole story at Fintech Futures.