Thank you -- I see a lot of people thinking 'banking' is all about your personal small loan from the neighborhood bank. That's like a tiny slice of the tip of the iceberg.
Most banking takes place in volume, it is done through personal contacts, and it requires substantial knowledge and background in banking to do. Anyone who has ever managed a significant line of credit, term loan, or more sophisticated instruments used by larger businesses knows that you cannot just replace it with some peer to peer model.
This tiny slice is important. Disruption of industries starts at the bottom and the margins. Finance's lunch will be eaten by the internet or one of its successors sooner or later.
It could be argued that the mortgage market meltdown was only possible with modern computational and communication technology so in some sense, the disruption is already happening -- the i-banks couldn't keep their newly possible hyper-risk under control.
They even admit as much in the article... the headline was crap but thems the times we live in :-(.
Think about a credit card company that makes a credit line marketplace... consumer banking will see major shifts in the next decade (wild predictions!).
Most banking takes place in volume, it is done through personal contacts, and it requires substantial knowledge and background in banking to do. Anyone who has ever managed a significant line of credit, term loan, or more sophisticated instruments used by larger businesses knows that you cannot just replace it with some peer to peer model.