What if, by 2030, you barely notice that you are dealing with a bank at all?
Say you are looking to buy a home.
Instead of opening a banking app, comparing mortgage products and filling in forms just to find out what you can afford, the bank could already be helping in the background.
It may know enough to estimate your borrowing capacity and offer financing when you actually need it, without making you figure out which product or channel to start with.
Connie Leung of Microsoft described it during one of our webinars as a future where “the bank will become largely invisible.”
Not because banks are disappearing, of course, but because they could sit quietly behind the decisions people are already making and step in when their help is needed.
Instead of constantly reminding customers that they are “banking”, the bank of 2030 could feel more like something that understands what you are trying to do and helps you get there.
Less visible, more connected, much better at understanding what the customer is actually trying to do.
Customers Do Not Care Which Channel Comes Next
Banks have spent years adding apps, websites, branches and contact centres, but customers can still feel the gaps between them.
You know the drill. Start a request online and at the end of the day, you may end up having to call the bank anyway.
You may also have to repeat the same information when you move from one channel to another because the bank’s systems do not always share data with each other.
Frankie Wai of Temenos believes customers should see much less of that by 2030.
“The Bank of 2030 is organised around customer intent, not products or channels,” he observed.
People will expect the bank to understand what they are trying to accomplish and help when the need arises.
A bank built around moments such as borrowing money or buying a house should offer fewer handoffs, quicker decisions and more relevant guidance.
Jerry G. Ngo, CEO of East West Banking Corporation, put it more plainly.
“People do not buy mortgages. People buy homes. The mortgage just happens to be a necessary evil.”
Someone looking for a home would want to know how much they can afford before making an offer, rather than only finding out after starting a mortgage application.
If the bank can provide that information earlier, it becomes part of the buying journey much sooner.
Good AI Should Not Keep Announcing Itself
To help with that friction, the panel talked about the use of AI as most of them believe that the tech could help banks recognise those moments before a customer has to ask.
Frankie described a move from reactive banking to an anticipatory model, where intelligence sits inside customer journeys and helps the bank respond when something changes.
“I think AI should be most valuable when customers do not notice it,” he remarked.
A useful interaction should feel timely and relevant, without asking customers to learn another interface.
“We used to get the user of the system to understand the system. Now, the system has to understand what is expected by the user,” Frankie added.
Anxin Leong of Tyme Group expects people to interact with their banks in more ways than just cards, QR codes or banking apps.
Some of that could happen through AI platforms or other services, with the bank working quietly in the background.
Even then, customers will still want to know that their money is safe and that the bank is acting in their best interest.
Automating 40 Steps Still Leaves You With 40 Steps
Talk about AI in banking also often begins with what the model can do. But Connie Leung would rather banks look at the process around it.
A loan workflow may contain 40 steps because of accumulated controls and disconnected systems.
She believes that adding AI to every stage could make individual tasks quicker, though the customer is still being dragged through a 40-step process.
“If you are not cutting the 40 steps and just trying to automate the 40 steps with different tools, your ROI will be very limited,” she cautioned.
Redesigning the workflow could reduce those 40 steps to 15 and bring loan processing down from several weeks to several days.
“Technology is not your strategy. Technology can only be an enabler,” Connie stressed.
Banks need to begin with the problem.
They have to ask themselves.
Does the process need to be rebuilt? Can AI handle part of the workload? Would a person working alongside it produce a better result?
Everyone Becomes the IT Team
East West Bank already has close to 200 AI models in use, but Jerry cautioned against treating them all as the same thing.
Machine learning used for credit scoring or fraud detection is different from large language models or agentic AI, and in some cases, a smaller model may be enough for the job.
It can cost less to run and make it easier for the bank to keep track of how the model works, who is responsible for it and where its output came from.
The change is also showing up in how staff build new tools.
Jerry shared that some operations teams are now putting together prototypes themselves instead of writing long business requirement documents and waiting for the technology team to interpret them.
“Now everyone is IT,” he quipped.
With more employees able to build their own tools, banks also have to think about who owns them, who approves any changes and what happens when something goes wrong.
Jerry summed up the risk this way:
“A good coder can become 10 times more productive, but a bad coder can become 10 times more destructive.”
By 2030, banks may gain more from knowing where each AI model works best than from having the most models.
People Will Still Matter When the Stakes Are High
Connie also drew a useful distinction between a person, a job and the individual tasks that make up that job.
“AI can replace a task, not necessarily a person,” she explained.
Some parts of a role may be automated, especially the repetitive work.
The person doing the job could then spend more time reviewing decisions, managing AI agents or handling cases that need more judgement.
Jerry however, was more cautious about what this could mean for entry-level roles, particularly jobs involving data entry.
At the same time, he expects personal relationships to matter even more in areas such as wealth management.
When a large amount of money is involved, a chatbot may not be enough.
He would still want to sit down with a relationship manager, ask questions and talk through the decision properly.
The same may apply to branches and other physical touchpoints.
Their role could shift away from routine transactions and towards helping customers who want advice, reassurance or a little more guidance.
So even if banking becomes less visible in day-to-day life, there will still be moments when customers want an actual person in front of them.
Banks Still Need to Pick Their Battles
A single version of the bank of 2030 is unlikely to work across every market.
As Jerry put it, “I don’t think we can be all things for everyone.”
Banks will need to be clearer about who they are built to serve.
Technology can give them more ways to reach those customers, but it cannot decide where they have a real advantage or why someone should choose them over another bank.
Anxin weighs his thoughts where he believes that AI could widen the gap between institutions that can adopt it responsibly at scale and those that cannot.
Brand trust, distribution, culture and organisational readiness may prove as important as the technology itself.
“What kind of organisation do we need to become to use that technology effectively?” he asked.
By 2030, banks may be able to make decisions faster, reduce the number of times customers are passed from one channel to another and step in with useful guidance much earlier.
All of that sounds promising, but it will mean little if customers still feel misunderstood.
They will want the bank to explain its decision, show how it fits their circumstances and connect them with someone when the matter is too important to leave to a machine.
“The bigger risk is not missing the technology trend, but becoming less relevant to customers,” Frankie warned.
Customers may notice the bank less by 2030. They will also certainly notice when it fails to understand them.
Did you find this interesting? Catch the full What Will the Bank of 2030 Look Like? webinar here:
Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on an image by rawpixel.com via Magnific.
