Another week at work with some interesting twists…
Is it a sinking ship feeling? Another 2 key persons just quit this week after I did so the week before. One of the key persons who introduced me to the job had also decided to throw in the towel after 10 years. He has had enough and thinks that the new management is destroying the value of what the group had created. He was looking to move in the last one year to a non-bank related role and the opportunity finally came along. The other person is a well-liked chap who was good at his job and has been in the bank for the last 4 years. He decided that the bank has lost the plot and heading nowhere. A brighter prospect came along and he grabbed it.
I am getting just so skeptical about the future direction of the banking industry. Major downsizing exercises continue and machines are taking over. Over regulation and total compliance roadblocks have made most businesses impossible to grow or even thrive. I forsee fintech making breakthroughs in the near future that would accelerate this decline. The blockchain enigma will soon be solved and systems like Swift will collapse. The uberization of banking solutions will compress revenues even further. Look at hotels – prices have collapsed as AirBnB and the internet are allowing the consumer to bypass middlemen and obtain the best value for money proposition at the lowest price every time at the click of a button. Industries are getting irrelevant overnight. The fat spreads that sustains an industry is wiped out as internet efficiency destroys old rules.
Where do we go from here? At least the world now has a common enemy. Trump’s rejection of climate change has made him earth’s public enemy number 1.
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