If traditional products are going, what's next? - Banking Exchange

This "Weekend Think" article is adapted from Brett King's latest book, Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane, published last year. Since 2005 I've been predicting the fundamental decline of branch banking. For almost 10 years I fought bankers who decried my assessment that branches would cease to be the most important channel in banking, to be replaced by far more efficient mechanisms for revenue generation and relationship. Today the discussion is increasingly resorting to a sort of desperate plea: "But branches aren't going to die completely, are they?" No one who is watching these trends today is still saying branches will grow.