Banking accelerated
I’ve started this year talking about the pace of innovation increasing and thus the need to re-invent banking and financial services with the new technology available.
Organisations can no longer wait for established technology roadmaps to unfold predictably
Futurist Brian Wang recently declared in a blog post that we are “on the event horizon of the singularity”, and that “we will get 40-60 years of progress in about six years.” His analysis offers compelling calculations supporting this projection. However, Wang’s bold predictions might even underestimate what we’ll achieve before 2030.
We stand at the threshold of an intelligence revolution. Today’s AI systems, primarily housed in centralised data centres, mirror the mainframe computing paradigm of decades past. Yet AI capabilities are rapidly dispersing into laptops, phones, vehicles, and countless devices, making “intelligence” an embedded feature of our technological landscape. This distributed intelligence is now accelerating the innovation process itself, as machine learning systems contribute to research and development across disciplines.
After decades of Moore’s Law, the doubling of computational power produces exponential leaps that dwarf the incremental increases of previous eras, and that’s before we even consider NVIDIA’s AI GPUs and Microsoft and Google’s quantum chips. Given this compounding acceleration, I question whether Wang’s dramatic predictions might actually be too conservative. We may witness even more profound transformations than anticipated.
Google’s new quantum chip, Willow, completed a benchmark calculation in under five minutes that would take the world’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years (that’s 10 followed by 25 zeros). Even before this, Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold project created a database of the 200 million proteins that make up all living organisms, something that would have taken humans over a billion years with AI.
In recent decades, technology development has often resembled a game of leapfrog – organisations that missed leadership in one innovation cycle could overtake competitors in the next, benefiting from hindsight. For example, many of the high-street banks were ahead of the game when it came to internet banking, but were far slower when it came to mobile banking. However, the current pace of change demands more than agility alone.
Traditional technology horizon planning must evolve into a continuous approach that integrates innovations in real time. Organisations can no longer wait for established technology roadmaps to unfold predictably.
The era of waiting for singular geniuses like Einstein to revolutionise thought is over. Today, technology handles the complex cognitive work that once demanded exceptional human minds. Our current barriers are no longer technical; they lie in our ability to envision and collectively commit to using these rapidly advancing tools for global betterment. The banking sector, along with every other industry, must acknowledge that we’re not just seeing faster change, but a complete transformation in the very nature of change itself.
About the author
Dharmesh Mistry has been in banking for more than 30 years both in senior positions at Tier 1 banks and as a serial entrepreneur. He has been at the forefront of banking technology and innovation, from the very first internet and mobile banking apps to artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR).
He has been on both sides of the fence and he’s not afraid to share his opinions. All opinions are his own – feel free to debate and comment below!
He founded proptech start-up AskHomey (sold to a private investor in spring 2023) and is an investor and mentor in proptech and fintech. He also co-hosts the Demystify Podcast.
Follow Dharmesh on X @dharmeshmistry and LinkedIn.
Read all his “I’m just saying” musings here.
