What the FinTech Book Club thinks of “The Intelligent Bank”

The FinTech Book Club recently devoted its discussion to my latest book Intelligent Bank, and the overall reaction was strongly positive. That was a relief as I’m a good friend of these guys, but that does not make them biased. All views are their own and independent and objective.

The reviewers are leading fintech experts Efi Pylarinou, Jim Perry and Stessa Cohen who, according to what I heard, saw the book as something more ambitious than another examination of artificial intelligence in banking. Instead, they viewed it as an attempt to answer a much bigger question: what does a bank become when AI, digital identity, real-time finance, intelligent agents and digital assets all become embedded into the financial system?

That distinction mattered to them because one of the book’s central arguments is that banks cannot continue treating each new technology as a separate project. AI cannot sit in one silo, digital identity in another, quantum computing somewhere else and digital assets with another team entirely. The technologies are converging, and the business model has to evolve with them. Efi observed that the book forces financial institutions to consider all of these developments together, however messy and difficult that becomes.

One of the strongest points of agreement was around the actionable recommendations that conclude each chapter. The reviewers described these as the “gold or the diamonds” of the book because they turn the discussion from theory into things that banking leaders can do today, next week and over the longer term. Importantly, they felt those actions were relevant not just to the world’s largest banks but also to community banks, credit unions and smaller financial institutions.

The book’s four big drivers of future financial services also resonated: the shift towards real-time, event-driven finance; the movement from selling financial products towards helping people manage their lives; the need for curation and orchestration across the organisation; and the growth of digital asset management. The reviewers saw these four ideas as a useful compass for navigating a future that no one can predict with confidence.

Digital identity received particular attention. The book’s emphasis on trusted, user-controlled identity, including technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, was seen as one of its important north stars. Rather than allowing identity to become another mechanism for centralising information about customers, the reviewers picked up strongly on the argument that people should have far greater control over their own data and how it is used.

Another area that generated considerable discussion was the human cost of digital crime.

The reviewers highlighted the argument that financial abuse should become a core banking risk category and that banks should develop services specifically designed around vulnerable customers.

Stessa illustrated the point with the story of her own mother, who was almost financially exploited by someone close to her. A bank teller and branch manager intervened because they knew the customer personally and recognised that something was wrong. The challenge for the intelligent bank is how to recreate that level of understanding when the relationship increasingly takes place digitally.

The discussion also picked up on the need for banks to look beyond the fraudulent transaction itself.

Customers are often manipulated on social media or elsewhere long before their money reaches the banking system. By concentrating only on the transaction, banks arrive late in the fraud journey. Understanding where the manipulation begins is therefore becoming as important as detecting where the money eventually moves.

Perhaps less glamorous, but regarded as equally important, was the argument that banks need to modernise their data foundations. Everyone wants to discuss what artificial intelligence can do, but AI cannot create an intelligent bank if the underlying data remains fragmented across incompatible systems.

It was viewed by Jim as one of the least exciting recommendations in the book and yet one of the most important.

That leads naturally to leadership.

The reviewers agreed strongly with the argument that technological change can no longer be delegated to the IT department. Boards and executive teams do not need to become AI engineers or blockchain developers, but they do need sufficient technological literacy to understand AI, tokenisation, blockchain, quantum computing and whatever follows well enough to ask the right questions about their implications for the business.

Interestingly, the discussion eventually moved beyond reviewing the book and towards considering how banks might use it. One suggestion was for executive teams to take a chapter or a group of action points and debate them together. Agreement with the book’s thinking is not required. In fact, disagreement might be more valuable, because explaining why an executive thinks an argument is wrong forces the organisation to confront its own assumptions about banking and its future.

The fictional Life in 2050 section prompted another idea: ask banking executives to write their own version of banking in 2050 and then examine whether anything they are doing today moves them towards that future. The reviewers suggested that this could even become a workshop or a collaborative collection of future banking scenarios.

There were some questions the reviewers felt deserved further exploration. In particular, the rise of intelligent agents creates an interesting question about whether customers will use an agent supplied by their bank or an independent personal agent acting across many financial providers. The reviewers felt that The Intelligent Bank establishes many of the ingredients for that debate without directly resolving it.

There was also some discussion around the book’s argument that banks will continue to exist because people still need trusted institutions to safeguard value, while the ultimate source of that trust may not always be a conventional national government. Efi felt this was an intriguing idea that deserved greater explanation.

Finally, there was some criticism of the book’s format. Jim felt that The Intelligent Bank was less easy to read than some earlier Skinner books because of its many short sections, lists, actions and rapid movement between subjects. It was harder to settle into the rhythm of a conventional narrative.

Yet, interestingly, that criticism became part of the recommendation. By the end of the book, Jim realised that The Intelligent Bank worked less as something to read once and place on the shelf and more as a resource to keep within reach and return to repeatedly.

That may be the best summary of the discussion. The reviewers did not see The Intelligent Bank as a book claiming to know exactly what banking will look like in five, ten or twenty years. They saw it as a framework for thinking about what comes next, challenging assumptions about what a bank is and, above all, giving banking leaders practical actions they can take now to prepare for a future none of us can predict.

And, just to be clear, I had nothing to do with their thoughts on the book as The Fintech Book Club are independent and objective. You can watch their discussion here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/fintechbookclub18september-inte7470155468343054336/