Broadly agree with this. Retail banking is a subsidy the public and regulators demand from banks in return for the host of privileges regulated financial institutions have which are necessary to run the banking businesses which actually make money.
The microeconomics of e.g. a checking account are *brutal.* It’s like selling $12 a month SaaS with a yearly OpEx of about $120 per account.
That math should be terrifying.
That math should be terrifying.
Plausibly someone wins here! But they probably win by accepting the same trade off as legacy financial institutions: “People are unwilling to pay for our best services so either we figure out how to charge someone other than the customer for them or we use them as lead gen.”
