The morning of 15th September 2008 is remembered darkly as the beginning of the global financial crisis. The bankruptcy of New York investment bank Lehman Brothers – and later the near-bankruptcy of UK-based RBS and HBOS – did not just spark a global recession, it is often said, but also permanently damaged public trust in large financial institutions. Into this void a few years later stepped what are now known as ‘challenger banks’, which use digital innovation to disrupt the market of large high-street outfits.
That is the common story anyway. But Tom Blomfield, CEO and founder of the popular digital bank Monzo, thinks it’s all far simpler than that. Smartphone culture, Blomfield believes, is the key to explaining the success of digital challengers.
“The smartphone in particular has really shifted our expectation of what products and services could do,” he said, “we don’t realise how seismic that shift has been. The fact that with Uber, for example, you can order a car with a single tap – that’s revolutionary.”...