What will the digital revolution mean for the future of financial intermediation? The last part of my speech today will address these fundamental changes. That isn’t to say that too little is spoken about digitalisation – one would be hard pressed to find a business section of a newspaper or a conference programme today that doesn’t mention it.
We do have a tendency, however, to overstate short-term trends – just think of Bitcoin and fintech start-ups – while we underestimate and think too little about long-term trends. Who among you has a clear idea of how digitalisation will alter banking and the banking sector’s structure in the medium and long term?