Banks are changing dramatically amid an avalanche of regulatory change and widespread debt reduction. They will be safer and, sadly for users of bank services, costlier as a result. Yet, all of this may soon seem somewhat irrelevant, because technology could transform the way banking works far more profoundly.

在大量监管改革以及广泛的债务削减之际，银行正经历大规模变革。它们将变得更安全，同时遗憾的是，对于银行服务的用户而言，它们也将因此变得成本更高。然而，这一切或许会很快变得无关紧要，因为科技可能会以更深远的方式改变银行的经营方式。

Banking is very “digitisable”. Cash is the only part of the industry that is inherently physical and that is a tiny part of what a bank does. The rest is really about transferring and modifying property rights and information of various sorts, all of which can be digitised. Of course banks have invested huge sums in technology – automating processes and enabling customers to bank online – but we have not yet seen the fundamental transformation of business models that have taken place in other sectors, such as music.

银行业的“可数字化”程度很高。现金是该行业唯一从根本上属于实体的部分，仅占银行业务的一小部分。余下业务实际上关乎财产权的转让和变更以及各种信息，所有这些都可以实现数字化。当然，银行在科技领域已投入巨资（业务流程自动化以及网上银行），但我们尚未看到其业务模式出现像其他行业（例如音乐）那样的根本性转变。

It will happen and when it does, it will have a huge impact. Some of the consequences are clear from other industries. Intermediaries disappear or get marginalised unless they discover new ways of adding value. Look at what has happened to recorded music companies or book shops. Banks are the primary intermediaries of the financial world, so their margins will fall unless they reinvent what they offer their customers and how they work.

这种转变将会出现，到那时，它将产生巨大影响。一些影响在其他行业已体现得很明显。除非发现新的增值途径，否则中介机构将会消失或被边缘化。看看音乐唱片公司或书店的情况吧。银行是金融业的主要中介机构，因此，除非它们对提供给客户的产品服务及其经营方式进行创新，否则它们的利润率将下滑。

In the digital world, things work differently. Scale and network effects drive competitive advantage. Winners tend to take all, as Google and eBay demonstrate. Discrete products get turned into bundled services. Customers of Spotify, a music service, do not buy recordings of individual songs – they buy a subscription to a cloud-based archive.

数字领域有自己独特的运行规则。规模和网络效应正推动竞争优势。赢家通常会夺取几乎所有市场份额，就像谷歌(Google)和eBay那样。零散的产品会让位于捆绑式服务。音乐服务公司Spotify的用户不会购买单首歌曲，他们会花钱订阅基于云的数字歌曲库。

Perhaps surprisingly, the transparency of the internet does not always lead to the disaggregation of bundles and the disappearance of cross-subsidies. Things get pulled apart and put together in different ways. Monetisation, costs and customer value can be even more often disconnected than in the physical world. New business models will emerge, as we have already seen: Lending Club’s peer-to-peer model is changing personal lending. Some will thrive, many will fail.

或许令人意外的是，互联网的透明并不总是会带来捆绑式服务的解体以及交叉补贴的消失。互联网中的分离和聚合发生的方式是不同的。与实体领域相比，货币化、成本和客户价值甚至可能更毫不相关。新的业务模式将出现，正如我们已经看到的那样：Lending Club的个人对个人(peer-to-peer)模式正改变个人贷款。一些模式将繁荣发展，而很多将流产。

Above all, customers will benefit enormously. Greater transparency will mean better prices for customers. Digital delivery will mean never having to go to a branch. More information and more flexible service configurations will put the customer in control.

最重要的是，客户将获得大量好处。增强透明度将意味着客户会获得更好的价格。数字交付将意味着永远不需要到分支机构办理业务。更多的信息和更灵活的服务结构将让客户获得控制权。

Why is it happening so slowly compared to other industries? Part of the answer lies in the banks themselves. Contrary to what many believe, banks are extremely risk-averse. They do not like failing – and it is almost impossible to innovate unless you are prepared to fail. In a context where trust is so important, and where there is increasingly little tolerance of any kind of failure, that is extremely difficult.

与其他行业相比，这种变化为何出现得如此缓慢？部分答案在于银行自身。与很多人的看法相反，银行对于风险极其厌恶。它们不喜欢失败，除非你为失败做好了准备，否则创新几乎是不可能的。在信任如此重要，同时对于失败的容忍度越来越小的背景之下，创新变得极其困难。

But regulation is an even more powerful impediment – and not only because “financial innovation” is a four-letter word in banking supervision circles. Technology-driven innovation that leads to big winners and big losers, that replaces established products with flexible service bundles, that overturns established business models and blurs the boundaries of banking, and that sometimes fails to deliver quite what was intended, does not fit well with today’s regulatory zeitgeist.

但监管是更强有力的制约因素，这不仅仅是因为在银行业监管领域，“金融创新”仿佛成了一个肮脏的字眼。由科技推动的创新会带来大赢家和大输家，会用灵活的捆绑式服务取代现有产品，会推翻现有的业务模式并模糊银行业的界限，产生的结果有时会违背初衷，这与目前的监管精神不太相符。

To be fair to the regulators, it is not like banks are straining at the leash. Mostly they are investing in technology to meet ever-increasing regulatory demands, or to reduce costs. There is relatively little investment in innovation that offers major changes in customer experience. The prevailing “zero tolerance” environment is toxic to new ideas. Moreover cybersecurity and privacy issues are becoming ever more acute. The more finance becomes digital, the more important it is to prevent intrusion, disruption and digital theft.

对于监管者而言，公平地来说，银行似乎并不急于摆脱束缚。它们大多正投资于科技，以满足日益提高的监管要求或降低成本，而对于会大规模改变客户体验的创新投资相对较少。目前的“零容忍”环境不利于新思想的出现。另外，网络安全和隐私问题正变得越来越尖锐。金融越数字化，防范入侵、破坏和数据盗窃的重要性就越高。

Yet, despite such challenges, and whether they like it or not, banks and their regulators are going to have to embrace technology-driven innovation. Otherwise it will simply happen by stealth, driven by players outside the industry. We have already seen examples such as M-Pesa, the mobile payments solution pioneered in Kenya, the ubiquitous PayPal or most recently Bitcoin – the online currency. Given the scale of customer benefits, and the scope to seize competitive advantage, there are huge prizes for those who can innovate successfully. Too much of the debate about banking is about not repeating the mistakes of the past. We risk missing the opportunity to make banks much better in the future.

然而，尽管面临这些挑战，不管它们喜欢与否，银行及其监管者将不得不接受由科技推动的创新。否则，这种创新只会在该行业以外力量的推动下暗中出现。我们已看到过类似的例子，例如肯尼亚率先推出的移动支付解决方案M-Pesa、随处可见的PayPal，以及最近出现的在线货币比特币(Bitcoin)。创新不但将给客户带来巨大好处，还将赋予创新者竞争优势空间，因此成功的创新者会获得巨大回报。在有关银行业的辩论中，有太多关注的是不让过去的错误重演。但我们可能会失去让银行未来变得更好的机会。

We are stepping up the pace of innovation at the bank I run: generating more ideas, implementing them more swiftly, being quicker to discard the ones that do not work. By making everything digital, exploiting the power of big data and the ubiquity of mobile communications, we see huge opportunities to enhance the value to our customers, to increase efficiency and to manage our risks more effectively. The upsides are huge, and the downsides are stark. That is why accelerating technology-driven innovation is a top priority.

我们正加速渣打银行(Standard Chartered)的创新：激发新的创意、更迅速地付诸实施、更快放弃无效创意。通过让所有业务实现数字化、利用大数据的力量以及无处不在的移动通信，我们看到大好的机会，可以提升我们对客户的价值、提高效率以及更有效地管理风险。有利因素很多，但不利因素也很明显。这就是为何加速科技驱动的创新是首要优先任务的原因。