The future of finance; not very inspiring

December 17, 2008

In the introduction of their recent book “The future of finance” Adjiedj Bakas and Roger Peverelli claim to have written this book for the financial community, people who work in the financial sector. This may be one of the reasons why reading the book was a disappointing struggle for me. It contains too little news for this audience to be an inspiring book. They describe four “mega trends” that will dramatically change the financial sector. The trends are pretty general, and unfortunately so is they way the writers elaborate on their impact on the financial sector. The idea of the “Triple G bank” (Google, Geenpeace, Grameen bank) is the creative highlight of the book, but any convincing back-up for it is missing. They discuss trends such as: aging population, population growth in emerging economies, innovation, influence of IT, need for scale and for client intimacy. For many years most of these trends are in all management development programmes of financial institutions. The contributions of some high profile persons, such as Princess Maxima, don’t seem to be included because of new insights, but for their authors’ names. Might sell well, but doesn’t add much.
The writers’ comments on the impact of “corporate social responsibility”, sustainability, greening unfortunately add little to what is already considered to be pretty mainstream among “the financial community” that deals with this. Yes, the writers agree that this will further impact the development of the financial sector. They even –rightly- claim that banks should take up the opportunity of being “drivers for change” (i.e. making ethical choices on what to finance and what not). However, they do not waste a single word on the dilemmas that banks will be facing along the way. What does it mean to take a position that deviates from governmental regulations? How do you cope with environmental and social aspirations of Western clients that might fundamentally deviate from the opinions of clients in for example China or India?
The last chapter (Management agenda 2010-2015) seems to be pasted to the book at a late stage. Maybe the devastation of the credit crisis has forced the writers to put everything in today’s context. But a claim that the sector need to ”focus on talent, innovation and simplicity” really is just a platitude. With that this book ends in an anti-climax (as far as this was possible after the previous chapters).
I do agree with the authors that predicting the future is harsh and reality may correct you even before the next edition of the book. However, given the reputation of Bakas and the “noise about this book”, my expectations were higher. Their work might be interesting for a general audience, but not for the target group they have chosen. I very much hope that financial community will judge Bakas cs on this work, not on the marketing for it.

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