> what if you had just one common UI that was pretty standard
Yes, well, the reasons that is unlikely is because banks need to differentiate their offerings and... you know what, scratch that. Just observe that this hasn't happened on the desktop in the way you describe, though every so often someone does try to reintermediate an industry in that way, which usually only works if you (a) control the distribution platform, so can bundle in the standard UI to the platform, and (b) manage to fool the industry into going along, eg. iTunes, Kindle). Banks, specifically, have yet to fall for any of the attempts along those lines, and there have been quite a few.
The situation is unlikely to change until/unless newly formed banks embrace splitting out the "dumb money pipe" as shared infrastructure and modern standardized interfaces so their value added services are separate (but integrated). To some extent you see glimmers of this in medicine with (almost, but not quite) portable electronic medical records. What progress has come about is solely due to the government ratcheting up the carrots and sticks to get "meaningful use" to happen, and those may get rolled back now.
Yes, well, the reasons that is unlikely is because banks need to differentiate their offerings and... you know what, scratch that. Just observe that this hasn't happened on the desktop in the way you describe, though every so often someone does try to reintermediate an industry in that way, which usually only works if you (a) control the distribution platform, so can bundle in the standard UI to the platform, and (b) manage to fool the industry into going along, eg. iTunes, Kindle). Banks, specifically, have yet to fall for any of the attempts along those lines, and there have been quite a few.
The situation is unlikely to change until/unless newly formed banks embrace splitting out the "dumb money pipe" as shared infrastructure and modern standardized interfaces so their value added services are separate (but integrated). To some extent you see glimmers of this in medicine with (almost, but not quite) portable electronic medical records. What progress has come about is solely due to the government ratcheting up the carrots and sticks to get "meaningful use" to happen, and those may get rolled back now.