The Great Transition: The Personalization of Finance is Here is an engaging and thoughtful book on how the trend in the “personalization” in an increasingly interconnected and online world will potentially shape the infrastructure of finance in years to come, creating efficiencies and empowering individual choices. Simply put, it is not only a vision of the future but an encyclopedia of what is currently happening in the digital world. Like all encyclopedias, it inspires the reader to learn more. In doing so we also are motivated to question some of the author’s prognostications. That is a sign of the quality of this book.

Emmanuel Daniel has been very perceptive in his analysis that market disruptions can be catalysts for positive change. The electronic and virtual worlds, coupled with the information economy, may generate new goods and services which none of us can yet imagine. All these unborn products may ultimately become online markets. His admonition that the genius will “not be in the sophistication but in extreme simplicity” is typical of the wisdom that he periodically shares with the readers.

With the evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 (the move to a “permissionless” and decentralized web run on the blockchain), as greater communication between machines (the “Internet of Things”) becomes more prevalent, they could be used for a variety of applications and new products. The pace of innovation in the space continues at a staggering rate. What insights do we have from other markets which at one time were permissionless environments? The personalization of finance will certainly include new goods and services based on externalities and new digital goods and services. Environmental goods and services are one obvious example. Art is another. Even now, the need for a standard designated clearing organization (DCO) is being debated.

When Emmanuel gives examples of existing goods and services, he avoids being dense. His description of community currencies is clearly written, as is the assertion that the DeFi model is “going down the path where anyone can share a ledger and simultaneously create, add, contribute, issue or trade in financial products.” He has great clarity, and his thoughts are easily accessible to the reader. I also particularly enjoyed his incorporation of academic research, such as David Ronfeldt in the section, “From Tribes to Networks”. Some might argue that this is distracting but this reader liked it.

I felt a connection to this book because as a young academic at Berkeley in the 1960s, I designed an all-electronic, for-profit commodities exchange. The technology and the concept were too early. It took another three decades for both electronic trading and demutualization to become ubiquitous in financial markets. The paradigm has now changed due to new technologies that can speed up this process and take us into new and exciting realms. Although he uses the example of Lloyd’s exchange (while one could argue that the trading of risk was already embedded in stock index futures in Amsterdam in 1605), and there is some reference that the Stockholm Stock Exchange was the first exchange to be demutualized with no mention of for-profit futures exchanges, this should not distract from the point he is making.

I fully enjoyed the history and the way forward he provides as both an academic, a practitioner and inventor of new markets and from the perspective of an author of a recent book on electronic trading and the blockchain. His last section, “The Next Financial Crisis”, leads us to wonder about the regulatory regimes that will be required in the age of the personalization of finance.

Emmanuel's book can help guide readers through the history, development, and exciting prospects in this new electronic world where the individual is front and center. From its use of the ice trade near the beginning as a teaching tool to the policy challenges of ring-fencing banks near the end of the book, it helps inform and guide us to think about problems in a new way. It is a highly readable and encyclopedic narrative on the current and future digital world where these new disruptive technologies, processes, and inventions can help ‘leapfrog’ entire societies and individuals in the years to come.

《伟大的转型——金融个性化重塑全球银行业》是一本引人入胜、有思想深度的书。它讲述的是，在一个日益互联和线上化的世界中，“个性化”将如何在未来几年，悄悄地重塑金融的基础设施，提升金融服务效率并赋予个人选择的权利。这本书包罗万象，不仅有对未来的展望，而且记录了数字世界当前发生的许多事情。和所有的百科全书一样，它激励读者去学习更多。在阅读过程中，它还会引发我们去思考，去质疑作者的一些预见。这正是本书特质的体现。

以理先生的分析非常敏锐。他认，市场动荡可能是创新求变的催化剂。电子和虚拟世界，再加上信息经济，可能催生我们无法想象的新产品和新服务。所有这些未来的产品，最终都可能成为在线市场。他告诫我们，天才“不在于复杂，而在于极度简单”，这是他经常与读者分享的经典智慧。

随着从 Web 1.0到Web3.0的演变(向区块链上运行的“无许可制”和去中心化网络的转变)，机器之间更广泛的通信(物联网)变得更加普遍，它们可以被用于各种应用程序和新产品。该领域的创新步伐仍在以惊人的速度前进。我们从其他曾经身处另一个“无许可制”环境的市场中获得了什么见解？金融个性化必然包括基于外部性的新产品和服务，以及新的数字产品和服务。环境产品和服务就是一个明显的例子，艺术数字化是另一个。即使是现在，对于是否需要一个标准的、指定的清算组织仍有争议。

以理旁征博引，全面介绍了现有的金融产品和服务。他对社区货币的定义非常明确，分布式金融(decentralized finance，简写为DeFi)模式“正在走上一条任何人都可以共享账本，并同时创建、添加、贡献、发行或交易金融产品的道路”。他的思路非常清晰，读者很容易理解他的想法。我还特别喜欢他结合学术研究的叙事方式，比如他在最后一章浓墨重彩地介绍了戴维•朗费尔特(David Ronfeldt)的“从都落到网络”理论。有些人可能认为这会让讨论失焦，但我很喜欢。

我自觉和这本书很有缘分。20世纪60年代，作为伯克利的一名年轻学者，我设计了一个全电子的营利性商品交易所。当时技术还不绝成熟，这些概念也不易被人接受。直到又过了30年，电子交易和股份化才在金融市场上普及开来。新技术加快了这一进程，并将我们带入新的令人兴奋的领域，这种模式现在已经发生了变化。尽管以理在书中使用的是劳埃德交易所的例子（有人可能会说1605 年阿姆斯特丹的股指期货已经包含了风险交易），而且有人认为斯德哥尔摩证券交易所才是第一家股份化交易所(没提营利性期货交易所)，但这些无碍于他的观点。

以理作为一名学者、新市场的实践者和发明家，以及近期的一本关于电子交易和区块链书的作者，他所提供的历史资料和对未来的展望都是我非常喜欢的。全书最后一部分中的“下一次金融危机”，让我们对金融个性化时代所需的监管制度充满好奇。

以理的书可以帮助读者了解这个“以个人为中心”的新电子世界的由来、现状和令人兴奋的未来。全书开篇讲述了一个冰贸易的故事，结尾又介绍了银行面对的“栅栏原则”政策挑战，书中巧用类比，有助于我们换个角度思考问题。这是一本关于当前和未来数字世界的百科全书，可读性很强。在未来的岁月里，书中的创见可以帮助全社会和个人“跨越”这次伟大的转型。

This is a tough book in the very best sense of that word. Readers should be prepared to pay serious attention to complex issues of fundamental social and economic importance.

Unlike many whose familiarity with a particular status quo induces a sense of comfort in their thinking about the subject, Emmanuel Daniel builds on his lifelong study of the financial system not to just confront the hardest questions that have been raised about it since the crisis of 2008, but to formulate newer and more profound ones.

He has for decades been a trusted source of expertise about banking in its most expansive definition. I met him, in fact, through his global response to requests for information about American regulatory policy after that upheaval. Shortly after my retirement from Congress, he included me as a speaker in conferences of regulators and banking officials in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

But even as he organized these expositions about the past and the present, I observed that he always stressed to his audiences the importance of thinking ahead about how the financing of economic activity would – and even more importantly, should – evolve. This book is an elaboration of that challenge.

I use the word “challenge” deliberately. This is a tough book for those who are complacent about the stability we have seen in the banking system over the past decade. Having fixed many of the problems that caused the crash of 2008, what we have put in place should be a foundation for a focus on preventing future shocks, rather than an occasion for self-reassurance.

One of the most profound lessons of 2008 is that failure to adapt the economic, legal and regulatory frameworks that govern the financial system to fundamental shifts as they are occurring – and well before they have taken root – is the only prudent strategy.

He is appropriately tough on those seeking a shortcut to understanding the role that digital currency should play. Too much current public discussion is on the near-term speculative aspects of monetary digitization and the assets that are created from them. He points out that digital currency will shape and be shaped by the changes coming to the financial system, and that will have grave consequences at a broader level in society.

Having chaired the Committee of the US House of Representatives that had a leading role in dealing with the crisis of 2008, I commend Emmanuel’s analysis to my successors as they discharge their responsibility to minimize future turmoil and cope with it when it inevitably comes.

I have one potential dissent. I agree with Emmanuel about the forces that will enhance the financial system by reducing the need for intermediation. I know he does not predict the withering away of conventional banking, but I think that the willingness – and ability – of significant numbers of people to dispense with the current level of services banks now provide may be overestimated.

Harnessing the potential of digitization to improve the ease of transactions between and among large economic actors has already begun to show its worth. But for the foreseeable future, the majority of individual and small organizations that rely on financial institutions to help manage their dealing with others will continue to need that help.

Emmanuel has provided some ideas of how the traditional bank might evolve over time, but the challenge for banks is to serve both sets of needs. (In the interest of transparency, I note that Signature Bank of New York, of which I am a director, is a pioneering example of how to do this.)

Emmanuel has performed an important service in describing the imperatives that are reshaping the financial architecture that undergirds our economy. As policy-makers undertake the difficult job of ensuring that the rules keep pace with this evolution – ending the pattern of severe regulatory lags that has been so demanding – this book has a very important role.

这本书并不通俗易懂。在阅读本书前，读者应该有所准备，认真关注有关社会和经济发展的根本性问题。这些问题是重要而复杂的。

与许多只关心特定现状的人不同，以理终身对金融体系进行研究。在此基础上，他不仅直面自2008年危机以来最困难的现实问题，还不断提出更新、更深刻的问题。

几十年来，他一直是银行业知识最广泛的权威人士。事实上，我是在那场危机后，响应他在全球范围内广泛征集美国监管政策信息的请求时认识他的。我从国会退休后不久，他邀请我在一些亚洲、非洲和中东的金融峰会上发言，参会者有很多监管机构的官员和银行高管。

我注意到，不管是过去还是现在，只要是在他所发起组织的会议上，以理总是向听众强调，要前瞻思考经济金融的未来发展，特別是应该如何发展。这本书就是对这一富有挑战性问题的集中阐释。

我特意使用 “挑战”这个词。在过去 10年中，我们的银行体系发展总体上较为平稳，对于那些感到自满的人来说，这本书显得非常不合时宜。实际上，在导致2008年经济崩溃的许多问题得到解送以后，我们所做的依然应该是专注于防范未来的危机，而不是沾沾自喜。

2008年最深刻的教训之一是，未能调整管理金融体系的经济、法律和监管框架，以适应正在发生的根本性变化——早在这些变化造成深刻影响之前做好管控，这才是唯一科学、谨慎的策略。

财于那些抱着急功近利想法去研究数字货币的人，以理的态度是有些生硬的，也是正确的。近期，货币数字化的投机性以及由此迅速形成的巨大资产，引发了社会的广泛关注和争议。他指出，数字货币将与金融体系的演变相互作用，这将在更广泛的社会层面产生深刻影响。

我曾在美国众议院担任金融服务委员会主席，该委员会在应对2008年危机方面发挥了主导作用。我的继任者做了很多工作，他们在退无可退的情况下尽到了自己的责任，最大限度地减少了未来可能出现的动荡。我赞扬以理对他们工作成效的评价。

我有一个潜在的异议。我同意以理的现点，即未来将通过减少对金融中介的需求来增强金融体系。我知道他不是在预测传统银行业的麥落，但我认为。很多人故弃银行目前提供的服务水平的意愿和能力可能被高估了。利用数字化的潜力来提高大型经济体之间的交易便利性，已经开始凸显其价值。但在可预见的未来，绝大多数的个人和小型组织将继续需要依靠金融机构帮助管理金融交易。

关于传统银行未来如何创新，以理提供了一些创意，但银行面临的挑战是统筹兼顾，以满足各类群体的金融需求。（我在纽约的签名银行（Signature Bank）担任董事，为了提高透明度，我要向大家推荐：签名银行是这方面的先驱。）

金融对于支撑我们的经济发展具有重要作用。对此，以理进行了全面的阐述。这本书将极大地帮助政策制定者行动起来，做出艰苦努力，让规则跟上创新的步伐，结束监管严重滞后的被动局面。

There are two types of books currently on the market today—those that predict the demise of banks due to changing technologies, and those that predict the demise of cash resulting from the development of digital currencies. The Great Transition: The Personalization of Finance is Here creates a new category. This isn’t simply a book about banking or a book about money.

Instead, it’s a book about the “financialization” of everything—how the value of a real asset is increasingly based on data about the asset, not the asset itself—and the banking industry and societal implications of this change.

Like other books, there is a discussion of technologies like cryptocurrency, APIs, and blockchain. But unlike other books—which often just proclaim the technologies’ ascendency and predict they will “change the world,”—The Great Transition goes behind the scenes to define the anatomy of innovation and why technology will lead to a fundamental reimagining of financial products and cause today’s institutions to crumble.

While the book explains the transition of the financial services industry resulting from technological change, it’s an important book for anyone trying to understand the impact of technology on society, as we go through the “great” transition from tribes to institutions to markets to networks.

市面上的书籍大致可以分为两类——那些预测由于技术变革银行将消亡的书籍，以及那些预测由于数字货币的发展现金将消失的书籍。《伟大的转型：金融个性化时代来临》则开创了一个新的类别。这不仅仅是一本关于银行或货币的书。

它讲述的是“万物金融化”——如何一个真实资产的价值越来越多地基于关于该资产的数据，而不是资产本身——以及这种变化对银行业和社会的影响。

与其他书籍一样，本书也讨论了加密货币、API和区块链等技术。但不同于其他书籍常常宣称这些技术将“改变世界”，《伟大的转型》深入幕后，定义了创新的本质，并解释了为什么技术将导致金融产品的根本性再想象，并使今天的机构瓦解。

虽然本书解释了由于技术变革金融服务行业的转型，但它对于任何试图理解技术对社会影响的人来说都是一本重要的书，帮助我们理解从部落到机构再到市场再到网络的“伟大”转型。

Emmanuel Daniel’s “The Great Transition” is extensively researched, an encyclopedia of the past, the present and possible future of the financial services industry. Based on his decades of experience as a worldwide consultant, especially in Asia, he describes how the financial industry’s drudgingly slow and glacial transition to the future will accelerate at warp speed in the digitized world of tomorrow. He describes what is going to happen, why it will occur, how it will proceed, and what you have to do to be successful. Digitizing existing products is not the answer, he says. The products must change, be personalized, and be device agnostic. Daniel’s book is a must read for bankers and financial services intermediaries who do not want to be intermediated!

以理的《伟大的转型》是一部广泛研究的作品，堪称金融服务行业过去、现在和未来的百科全书。基于他作为全球顾问，尤其是在亚洲的数十年经验，他描述了金融行业从缓慢、冰河期般的转型到未来将在数字化世界中以极快速度加速。他解释了将要发生的事情、为什么会发生、如何进行以及如何在这一过程中取得成功。他指出，单纯地数字化现有产品并不是答案。产品必须改变、个性化，并且设备无关。以理的书对于那些不想被中介化的银行家和金融服务中介来说，是必读之作！

I appreciate that the last thing people want to read about is another banker pontificating on Banking, but I ask for forgiveness: in setting up SC Ventures I’ve been on a learning journey from a banker to what some of my friends call a “reformed banker”, specifically meaning that I am deeply preoccupied with the societal impact of Banking.

This has made me more curious about the future, meaning attempting to address the question of how Banking will address societal expectations not just today but also for decades to come. Such learning journey has made Emmanuel and myself kindred spirits. We don’t know the future, but we can try and use our experience to reflect on a truly “connected world”, with a “rewired banking DNA” at the heart of it.

Historical context and technology

The historical context for “The Great Transition” is the beginning of a new era, what some call the “age of information”, where Technology fundamentally changes the way we interact on the planet, creating a truly connected world of individuals. This prediction is at a minimum plausible, and as Emmanuel reflects on the implications for banking specifically, we could broaden these observations to business and society at large.

Beginning with Technology, Emmanuel appropriately focuses on some of the recent trends, including Web3 and the Metaverse. He rightly notes the importance of IOT being embedded in our future lives - I might add in integrating physical, informational (metadata), as well as obviously financial flows, opening new horizons for supply chains and commerce - and queries whether “peer to peer financing“ might succeed the second time around thanks to 6G?

I would broaden this statement and observe that the infrastructure currently developed for gaming (edge computing and low latency, or virtual reality hardware) will ultimately become pervasive.

For a long time, gaming and adult entertainment may well have been the main commercial use cases for the internet, and so the market invested in building infrastructure for the internet, thanks to such lucrative use cases. We take this infrastructure for granted now and have come a long way in terms of other applications!

The analogy applies to gaming and the Metaverse today: we could also argue that cryptocurrencies are currently the only commercially viable use case for digital assets (other than coins in gaming). But as we build infrastructure for them (custody, settlement, exchanges), it will also serve other future use cases, as cryptos will continue to exist whilst other types of digital assets are likely to dominate (and while I am doubtful that “stakers can earn 8-20%” indefinitely, I would agree that new sources of income are and will be uncovered).

So overall, a great point made about technology and infrastructure being developed today with a specific purpose, which is likely to be leveraged across many more use cases in the future, the majority of which we have yet to imagine.

At this point Emmanuel takes the view of a banker and argues that Finance “will be central to the architecture of how we interact with each other” (by opposition to being an afterthought in the platform era).

I am actually not sure how central Finance per se will be to such architecture, but we certainly agree that Identity will, and we again agree that whoever “masters” identity will control finance…

As Emmanuel reflects on “deception”, we could have pushed the science fiction just a bit further: in the Metaverse, we’ll assume several identities, represented by multiple avatars - just like we assume different personalities today depending on the circumstances.

We could also reflect on “avatar singularity” - meaning at which point do we care about our avatar(s) more than we care about ourselves (the novels “SnowCrash“ and“Ready Player One” have foreseen that moment)?

This question is relevant in Finance because at that time, we’ll protect our avatars’ identities, as well as spend money on our avatars, more so than we do for ourselves!

So now the question dear to our hearts is - what are the implications of all this for the banking industry in particular?

Banks and Fintechs

This topic starts with an interesting conversation about banks’ business model, historically focused on deposits. We could ask what is a deposit, be it retail or corporate, and importantly what will it mean in the future. Are we simply rediscovering physical bank vaults where the mere safekeeping of keys for tokens or cryptocurrencies is akin to value preservation?

Emmanuel argues that banks have “squandered the API opportunity” - I agree for now, however it is not that banks are evil or stupid and the squandering isn’t limited to just financial institutions.

This example goes to the heart of why it is so hard for established corporations (including banks) to adopt business models they weren’t designed for. Banks wouldn’t do it, simply because their business model and vertical set-up (in product or business lines) is in contradiction with the horizontal set-up of platforms.

New ventures or “Fintech entrants” may well provide the Darwinian adaptation required. But importantly, and with them, some banks will evolve too: SC Ventures was set up with the conviction that transforming Banking was going to happen both in and outside the banks, and the rationale for “outside” (meaning in partnership with Fintechs but also creating new ventures) was precisely the business model argument above, i.e. the fact that banks needed to experiment with new and different ways of doing business, but could not adopt fundamentally different business models inside the existing organization, hence the need for independent ventures.

This leads us naturally to a reflection about Fintechs, are they the next generation of financial services? I might have posed a more granular definition of Fintech, differentiating for example between the ones aspiring to replace the banks or fulfil finance functions vs the ones wanting to provide services to such banks.

I also do not think it is true that Fintechs who are a vendor to a bank cannot scale because they are bank-specific: the winners tend to scale across multiple banks and serve the broader industry (and yes, other Fintechs may well fail to scale for other reasons, which is normal…).

Lastly, I have met many successful founders who come from a range of backgrounds, not just failed bankers, which may be a bit dismissive or too generic a statement - but let’s not shy from a bit of controversy!

Having said the above, I would broadly agree with the financial analysis of Fintechs: it is all in the balance-sheet… If we account for the difference between “technology vendors to banks” and Fintechs becoming financial institutions, it is clear that the latter are “finance companies with a technology twist”, which is a very different analysis.

The pressing issue with these in my mind is however not that VC money is too expensive per se as argued in the book (not all VCs are vultures, but more likely rational investors aspiring to get paid for the risks they take), but rather that such “new” finance companies are essentially funding debt with equity money.

So when a “next Gen” Fintech makes loans to the unserved, financed with expensive equity, this is fine for the first loan and to get a track record, but if such loans are not financeable at some point with proper debt, then the balance-sheet of such finance company will not be sustainable in the long run. I believe Emmanuel is however spot on in his analysis of the flaws of BNPL, specifically including their cost of lending - and I did appreciate the insightful China examples and perspective.

A last point on Fintechs: Emmanuel told me a few times about how SC Ventures may well be unique in our approach to partnering with Fintechs, explaining his pessimism on Fintechs’ ability to scale while serving traditional banks. There is a hack though, it’s called empathy.

Empathy, contrary to common perception, isn’t about being “nice”, it means the ability to understand someone else’s position. Fintechs need to understand the requirements of the banks they are dealing with, including their regulatory constraints.

Also, banks aspiring to partner with Fintechs need the empathy required to appreciate that they are big, have plenty of time, money and options - whereas Fintech startups tend to have none of the above options.

Accordingly, the formula to deal with them isn’t one of a conventional vendor relationship - this understanding opens new horizons for banks hoping to be on the right size of evolution.

Society and the future

Beyond Banking and Fintech, I thought the book was at its best when reflecting on the broader societal themes associated with the age of information, or a “truly connected world”.

Emmanuel built (unknowingly) on James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, whose observations on the consequences of the Information Age were first exposed in 1997’s “Sovereign Individual”.

There was no Metaverse and no DeFi then… but the revolution described by the two authors underpins his narrative of transition in finance, and we can now reflect with Emmanuel on the tremendous implications of DeFi, its impact on Central Banks, financial institutions, its consequences for policy makers and regulators: in summary, how our world is going to change.

In this context, I found the discussion on CBDC vs Stablecoins particularly interesting, leading to the conclusion that CBDCs ought to fail, as they struggle to provide interoperability, let alone keep up with technology and evolution in DeFi.

Should China however “insist” on its CBDC, while CBDCs could “lose out” to real DeFi in the West, we might witness the most important bifurcation ever seen between West and East? Or would the world be even more fragmented?

Like the authors mentioned above, Emmanuel researched the life of Gutenberg: was he the “trigger”, or just the manifestation of the “Age of Information” of his time. We could ask ourselves why Gutenberg actually printed the “Gutenberg Bible” - but more importantly, what would he print today? If his endeavour precipitated the decline of the main institution at the time (the Church), what is again the analogy today?

More importantly still, Emmanuel reflects on the implications of such New Age for Finance. He may have omitted one of the good historical examples of a banking business based on imperfect information: Trade Finance for the last 1000 years has rested on asymmetry of information between buyers & sellers (and it isn’t actually that different today).

The question would be, does this really change in a truly connected world? Should we be thinking of a new and reinvented Trade Financing business, revolving around the mastering of identity, or tomorrow’s KYC?

Some other gold nuggets in the early pages, where Emmanuel reflects on “Energy being the currency of universe”, in which case, money is actually the (lithium) battery equivalent - and finance is the power train…

We could push further and reflect on the evolution of battery technology, where sensors on cars feed AI, optimizing battery usage hence making the battery smaller and more efficient: no doubt this analogy applies to Finance today.

Emmanuel also muses that “there is no comptroller of currency in nature”. Well, I think that yes there is - it is called the “law of entropy”! What is the law of entropy equivalent in finance? The debate here: are we right to institutionalize the comptroller of currency in the context of Finance, when the “financial law of entropy” does such a good job?

The next crisis

We inevitably get to reflections on what the next crisis will be: we banking industry are so good at solving for the last crisis - less good at anticipating the next - Emmanuel is right to pause and reflect on it.

Emmanuel thinks of the war in Ukraine as the first war, or significant crisis, in a connected world. I would say not exactly, we could argue it was actually WWI. The “peak of globalization” (adjusting for historical GDP data) might have been 1914, and it never quite recovered from WWI and II, notwithstanding the last 50+ years of relative increase in globalization (minus the last three…).

There are nevertheless lessons to learn here, notably that the progress which people at the time took for granted could indeed “mean-revert”, but also how devastating a crisis can become in the context of the connections which the world has established, just as we have seen recently with dislocated supply chains and impending food crisis.

Beyond the food and energy crisis everyone’s talking about at the moment - and specifically as we reflect on a “truly connected world in the age of information” - I could think of a few other things:

• A crisis associated with individuals’ “identity”
• Decline of nation states as an institution, as they no longer fulfil their societal functions
• Reactionary forces of the nations: war of the real against the virtual, but also fragmentation, erection of walls and borders
• Poor vs rich disparities in the age of information - populism on back of it, but in a connected Metaverse context
• And a topical one at the moment: forever stagflation

Some of these may just be for another book. In the meantime, I guess it was about time somebody derived the consequences of the Age of Information in the context of Banking: this is a great first attempt of its kind, to be undoubtedly followed by numerous debates and iterations, especially as our industry evolves

Note : Alex Manson is the “founder” and global head of SC Ventures, the venture capital arm of Standard Chartered Bank, one of the few successful bank-owned VC initiatives in the world.

我理解读者最不想看到的就是另一个银行家在谈论银行业，但请原谅我的赘述：在成立SC Ventures的过程中，我经历了从银行家到朋友们称之为“改造后的银行家”的学习历程，特别是我对银行业的社会影响深感关注。

这让我对未来更加好奇，试图解决银行业如何应对不仅仅是今天而是未来几十年的社会期望的问题。这段学习之旅使我和以理成为志同道合的人。我们不知未来将如何，但可以尝试利用我们的经验来反思一个真正“互联的世界”，其中“重塑的银行DNA”是核心。

历史背景与技术

《伟大的转型》的历史背景是一个新时代的开始，有人称之为“信息时代”，技术从根本上改变了我们在地球上的互动方式，创造了一个真正互联的个人世界。这个预言至少是可信的，以理具体反思了这一变化对银行业的影响，我们可以将这些观察扩大到商业和整个社会。

从技术开始，以理恰当地关注了一些近期的趋势，包括Web3和元宇宙。他正确地指出，物联网将在我们未来的生活中嵌入的重要性——我可能还会补充整合物理、信息（元数据）以及显然是金融流动，开启供应链和商业的新视野——并且询问“点对点融资”是否会在6G的帮助下第二次成功？

我会扩大这个声明并观察到，目前为游戏开发的基础设施（边缘计算和低延迟，或虚拟现实硬件）最终将变得无处不在。

长期以来，游戏和成人娱乐可能一直是互联网的主要商业用例，因此市场投资于互联网基础设施建设，得益于如此有利可图的用例。我们现在将这种基础设施视为理所当然，并且在其他应用方面取得了长足进步！

这种类比适用于今天的游戏和元宇宙：我们也可以说，加密货币目前是数字资产唯一商业上可行的用例（除了游戏中的硬币）。但是当我们为它们构建基础设施（托管、结算、交易所），它也将服务于未来的其他用例，因为加密货币将继续存在，而其他类型的数字资产可能会占主导地位（虽然我怀疑“质押者可以无限期赚取8-20%”，但我同意新的收入来源将被发现）。

总体而言，关于今天为特定目的开发的技术和基础设施可能在未来被广泛应用的观点是非常好的，我们大多数还无法想象的用例将受益于这些基础设施。

在这一点上，以理以银行家的视角认为，金融“将成为我们彼此互动架构的核心”（相对于在平台时代的事后思考）。

我实际上不确定金融本身在这样的架构中有多么核心，但我们肯定同意身份将是核心，谁“掌握”身份谁就控制金融……

当以理反思“欺骗”时，我们可以进一步推测：在元宇宙中，我们将承担多个身份，由多个化身代表——就像我们今天根据环境承担不同的角色一样。

我们还可以反思“化身奇点”——即我们在乎我们的化身胜过我们在乎自己（小说《雪崩》和《头号玩家》预见了这一时刻）？

这个问题在金融领域尤为相关，因为届时，我们将保护化身的身份，并在化身上花费更多的钱，比我们自己还多！

那么现在我们心爱的银行业问题是——所有这些对银行业意味着什么？

银行和金融科技公司

这个话题从一个有趣的关于银行商业模式的对话开始，历史上集中于存款。我们可以问，什么是存款，无论是零售还是企业存款，重要的是未来它将意味着什么。我们是否只是在重新发现物理银行金库，其中简单的保管代币或加密货币的钥匙类似于价值保存？

以理认为银行“浪费了API机会”——我现在同意，但这并不是说银行是邪恶或愚蠢的，浪费不仅限于金融机构。

这个例子触及了为什么现有公司（包括银行）难以采用它们未设计的商业模式的核心。银行不会这样做，简单地因为它们的商业模式和垂直设置（在产品或业务线）与平台的横向设置相矛盾。

新的企业或“金融科技进入者”可能提供必要的达尔文适应。但重要的是，一些银行也会随之演变：SC Ventures的设立是基于这样一种信念，即银行业的转型将在银行内部和外部同时发生，“外部”（即与金融科技合作但也创造新企业）的理由正是上面提到的商业模式论点，即银行需要尝试新的和不同的业务方式，但不能在现有组织内采用根本不同的商业模式，因此需要独立的企业。

这自然引出了对金融科技的思考，它们是下一代金融服务吗？我可能会对金融科技提出更细致的定义，例如区分那些想要取代银行或履行金融功能的金融科技与那些想要为银行提供服务的金融科技。

我也不认为“为银行提供服务的金融科技无法扩展”这一说法是真的：赢家往往跨越多家银行并服务于更广泛的行业（是的，其他金融科技可能因其他原因未能扩展，这是正常的……）。

最后，我遇到过许多成功的创始人，他们来自各个背景，而不仅仅是失败的银行家，这可能是有点忽略或过于笼统的说法——但让我们不回避一点争议！

尽管如此，我大体上同意金融科技的财务分析：一切都在资产负债表上……如果我们考虑“银行技术供应商”和成为金融机构的金融科技之间的区别，很明显，后者是“带有技术转折的金融公司”，这是一个非常不同的分析。

我认为这些问题的紧迫性并不是书中所说的“风险投资资金本身过于昂贵”（不是所有的风险投资都是秃鹫，但更可能是希望为其所承担的风险获得报酬的理性投资者），而是这些“新”金融公司本质上是用股权资金来资助债务。

因此，当一个“下一代”金融科技公司向未服务对象贷款，以昂贵的股权资助这笔贷款时，这是可以的第一笔贷款并建立业绩记录，但如果这些贷款在某个时刻不能以适当的债务资助，那么这样的金融公司资产负债表从长远来看将无法持续。我相信以理对BNPL缺陷的分析是非常正确的，特别包括它们的借贷成本——而且我非常欣赏有见地的中国示例和观点。

最后一点关于金融科技：以理几次告诉我SC Ventures可能在与金融科技合作的方式上是独特的，解释了他对金融科技能力扩展的悲观态度。然而，有一个技巧，那就是同理心。

同理心，不同于普遍的认知，并不是“友好”，而是理解他人立场的能力。金融科技需要理解与银行打交道的要求，包括它们的监管约束。

同样，银行希望与金融科技合作需要具备同理心，理解它们大，时间充裕，有充足的资金和选择——而金融科技初创公司往往没有上述任何选择。

因此，与它们打交道的公式不是常规的供应商关系——这种理解为希望站在进化正确一边的银行开辟了新的视野。

社会与未来

超越银行和金融科技，我认为这本书在反思信息时代或“真正互联的世界”相关的广泛社会主题时表现最好。

以理无意中借鉴了詹姆斯·戴尔·戴维森和威廉·里斯·莫格爵士的观点，他们在1997年的《主权个人》中首次揭示了信息时代的后果。

当时没有元宇宙和去中心化金融……但这两位作者描述的革命支撑了他的金融转型叙述，现在我们可以与以理一起反思去中心化金融的巨大影响，其对中央银行、金融机构的影响，以及对政策制定者和监管者的后果：简言之，我们的世界将如何改变。

在此背景下，我发现关于CBDC与稳定币的讨论特别有趣，得出的结论是CBDC注定要失败，因为它们难以提供互操作性，更不用说跟上去中心化金融中的技术和进化。

然而，如果中国坚持其CBDC，而CBDC在西方可能会输给真正的去中心化金融，我们可能会看到东西方之间有史以来最重要的分裂？还是世界会更加分裂？

像上述作者一样，以理研究了古腾堡的生平：他是“触发器”，还是仅仅是其时代信息时代的表现。我们可以问自己为什么古腾堡实际上印刷了“古腾堡圣经”——但更重要的是，他今天会印刷什么？如果他的努力加速了当时主要机构（教会）的衰落，今天的类比是什么？

更重要的是，以理反思了这种新时期对金融的影响。他可能遗漏了一个很好的历史例子，即基于不完善信息的银行业务：贸易融资在过去1000年里一直基于买卖双方之间的信息不对称（实际上今天并没有太大不同）。

问题是，这在一个真正互联的世界中是否真的改变？我们是否应该考虑一个全新的贸易融资业务，围绕掌握身份或明天的KYC？

书中前几页还有一些其他的金点子，以理反思“能源是宇宙的货币”，在这种情况下，金钱实际上是（锂）电池的等价物——金融是动力系统……

我们可以进一步思考电池技术的演变，汽车上的传感器为人工智能提供数据，优化电池使用，因此使电池更小更高效：毫无疑问，这一类比适用于今天的金融。

以理还沉思“自然界中没有货币监管者”。好吧，我认为是有的——它叫做“熵定律”！金融中的熵定律等价物是什么？争论在这里：我们是否正确地在金融背景下制度化了货币监管者，而“金融熵定律”做得很好？

下一次危机

我们不可避免地要反思下一次危机会是什么：我们银行业善于解决上一次危机——不善于预测下一次——以理确实应该停下来反思。

以理认为乌克兰战争是一个互联世界中的第一次战争或重大危机。我认为不完全是，我们可以争论实际上是第一次世界大战。全球化的顶峰（调整历史GDP数据）可能是1914年，从未完全从第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战中恢复，尽管过去50多年相对增加了全球化（减去最近三年……）。

这里有许多教训，特别是人们当时认为理所当然的进步确实可能“均值回归”，但也看到危机在世界建立的联系背景下可能变得多么毁灭性，正如我们最近在供应链中断和即将到来的粮食危机中所看到的那样。

除了目前每个人都在谈论的粮食和能源危机——特别是当我们反思一个“信息时代的真正互联世界”时——我还可以想到一些其他事情：

• 与个人“身份”相关的危机
• 作为机构的国家衰落，因为它们不再履行其社会功能
• 国家的反应力量：现实与虚拟的战争，但也有分裂，竖起墙和边界
• 信息时代贫富差距——背景下的民粹主义，但在一个互联的元宇宙中
• 一个当前的热门话题：永久性滞胀

其中一些可能只适合另一本书。与此同时，我想该是有人在银行背景下推导出信息时代的后果的时候了：这是其种类中的第一个伟大尝试，无疑将被无数辩论和迭代所跟随，特别是当我们的行业不断发展时。

备注 : 亚历克斯·曼森是SC Ventures的创始人和全球负责人，这是渣打银行的风险投资部门，是全球为数不多的成功银行拥有的风险投资机构之一。

I first met Mr. Daniel in 2001 when The Asian Banker had just entered China. This was a period of rapid and dizzying technological change in the Chinese banking industry, and Mr. Daniel and his publication, The Asian Banker, bore witness to this era. Reflecting on those days, ICBC's pioneering move to consolidate 36 dispersed data centres across the country into one was unexpectedly successful. This action swiftly changed the traditional decentralised operational model, leading to factory-like, centralised, and standardised back-office operations. Subsequently, ICBC established and operated financial transaction centres, documentation centres, report centres, electronic banking centres, telephone banking centres, SMS platforms, and remote authorisation centres. Personal finance, credit cards, wealth management, and precious metal trading rapidly developed, significantly reducing costs and improving efficiency. For example, centralised report preparation alone freed up 30,000 staff, saving nearly RMB 6 billion ($825 million) in annual labour costs. By 2023, ICBC's cost-to-income ratio was 26.9%, more than 20 percentage points lower than the international peers. In 2000, ICBC's intermediary business revenue was only RMB 3.08 billion ($423 million), but by 2023, it had grown 50 times to over RMB 150 billion ($20.6 billion). Despite the rapid advancements in banking technology, financial technology has progressed even faster over the past 20 years, with numerous innovations in the payment sector changing people’s cash usage habits. In 2023, China's electronic payments numbered 12.5 trillion transactions, amounting to RMB 4000 trillion ($ 550.2 trillion). Banks accounted for 90% of the total transaction value, but non-bank payment institutions handled 80% of the transaction volume, reaching 10 trillion transactions. Over 20 years ago, such institutions did not even exist.

Mr. Daniel's book, The Great Transition, documents the evolution of financial history. As he noted, the advent of finance and technology has always led to the application of technology in finance. The history of financial development is a process of continuous financial innovation. In the past 20 years, China's financial technology has advanced rapidly, drastically changing business models, products, services, and processes. Financial institutions' digital reforms are in full swing, with the banking sector quickly transforming. From intelligent service robots in bank lobbies to precise customer profiling in system back offices, and from a single mode of pursuing abundant traffic to focusing on data governance and foundational technological infrastructure. Smart advisors have improved asset management and private banking services, and remote mobile technology has revolutionised banking operations. The centralised data systems of 20 years ago have quietly evolved into distributed data systems. Managing risks in asset transformation is a challenge for healthy credit business development. Big data and artificial intelligence have enhanced risk control capabilities during asset transformation, with banks attempting to learn from accumulated experiences to simulate human brain mechanisms for credit judgment and decision-making, shifting business decisions and strategy formulation from experience-based to data-driven.

The key to maintaining a competitive edge in the future banking sector lies in mastering data, recognising the new characteristics of the big data era, and adopting new measures. Using big data technology to redevelop and reshape new economic and financial relationships, finding suitable customer groups for the bank model, and preventing financial risks based on data analysis can extend the commercial and product value chains of banks, fundamentally changing the supply mode of financial services and reshaping the banking industry's ecosystem and competitive landscape. The competition focus for banks is no longer limited to financial services but encompasses comprehensive competition in financial technology, organisation, systems, and culture—both hard and soft strengths.

Mr. Daniel's new book showcases the challenges we will face in the future and warns of future financial crises. Future banks will face challenges from cross-sector institutions, and their competitors may not be familiar peers but new fintech participants. Banks will inevitably move towards a personalised era, with technological evolution and narrowing net interest margins already indicating a trend of change. Future finance may not be a place but will remain an indispensable service. Future financiers will either be tech-savvy financial experts or finance-savvy tech experts. Thus, lifelong learning, continuous updating, diligent thinking, and daring to practice are key to their iterative knowledge updating. Financial technology is also continuously evolving. People marvel at today’s fintech, but newer and more unforeseeable financial technologies will emerge tomorrow and the day after, with shorter cycles of change. These will undoubtedly impact existing financial formats, posing long-term and profound challenges to the financial industry.

The most competitive financial institutions in the future will adapt and change as needed, renewing and innovating, creating generational gaps in competition between different banks. Innovations and developments in a new generation of information technology represented by mobile internet, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence are essentially a revolution in financial information transmission, reception, analysis, and processing technology. It will further break the time and space limitations of financial transactions and services, bring changes in customer demand preferences, expand service convenience and coverage, significantly improve service levels and customer experience, and bring a series of changes in business models, concepts, and financial culture. The core functions of financial consumption, payment, credit, and financing are entering a new stage of mutual integration and promotion, leading the traditional financial industry into obsolescence, while a vibrant and efficient new financial industry is approaching.

我认识以理先生是在《亚洲银行家》刚进入中国的2001年。这是一个中国银行业科技变化巨大、令人眼花缭乱的时代。以理先生和他的《亚洲银行家》见证了这个时代。回想起当年工商银行首家创新，将分散在全国的36个数据中心整合成一个，这个举动收到了意想不到的成功。它迅速改变了传统分散作业的模式，实现了后台业务处理工厂化、集约化和规范化运营，此后总行的金融交易中心、单证中心、报表中心、电子银行中心、电话银行中心、短信平台、远程授权中心建立和运营，个人金融、信用卡、财富管理、贵金属交易快速发展，极大地削减了成本和提高了效率。如报表集中编制一项改革，就释放出人员3万名，每年减少人力成本支出近60亿元。2023年工商银行收入成本比为26.9%，低于国际同业20多个百分点。2000年时，工商银行的中间业务收人仅为30.8亿元，到2023年中间业务收人达1 500多亿元，增长了50倍。尽管银行业在金融科技方面进步飞快，但是20年来整个金融科技进步更快，支付领域出现大量创新，改变了人们的现金使用习惯。2023年，我国电子支付笔数为1.25万亿笔，金额4000万亿元。从支付总额看银行业占据了90%，但从支付笔数来看，非银行支付机构占比80%，达到1万亿笔。而在20多年前，这类机构根本还没诞生。

以理先生在他的著作《伟大的转型——金融个性化重塑全球银行业》中记录了金融历史的变迁。正如他所言，在世界上出现了金融和科技之后，就出现了科技在金融上的运用。一部金融发展史就是金融不断创新的过程。中国近20年来金融科技进步飞速，极大地改变了金融的业务模式、产品、服务和流程。金融机构的数字化改革正如火如茶，银行业迅速转型，从网点大堂的智能服务机器人到系统后台的精准客户画像，从追求丰富流量人口的单一模式到聚焦于数据治理、底层技术基础设施的建设。智能投顾改善了资产管理和私人银行业务的服务，远程移动技术颠覆了银行营业服务模式。20年前的数据集中，又悄然地走向分布式数据系统。管控好资产转化中的风险是信贷业务健康发展的难题，大数据技术和人工智能提升了资产转化过程中对风险的把控能力，银行尝试通过学习积累胜败经验，模拟人脑的机制来判断、决策信贷，使金融机构经营决策和战略制定从依赖经验向依据数据转变。

银行在未来竞争中会不会保持优势，关键在于是不是能成为掌握数据的强者，是不是能认清大数据时代的新特征并采取新举措，通过大数据技术，重新发展和塑造新的经济金融关系，找到适合自己银行模式的客户群体，并依据大数据分析防范金融风险，推动银行商业价值链和产品价值链向外扩展延伸，深刻改变金融服务供给模式，重塑银行业的生态和竞争格局。银行竞争的焦点不再限于单纯的金融服务竞争，还包括金融科技、组织、制度、文化等硬实力和软实力的综合竞争。

以理先生的新书展示了未来我们所面临的挑战，并且警示了未来的金融危机。未来的银行面临着跨界机构的挑战，银行的竞争者可能不是熟悉的同行和同事，而是新的金融科技参与者。未来的银行必然会走向个性化时代，科技进化及银行净息差收窄已预示着变化的趋势。未来的金融可能不是一个场所，但它仍然是一种不可或缺的服务。未来的金融家，或是懂科技的金融专家，或是懂金融的科技专家，因此终身学习、持续充电、勤于思考、敢于实践是其知识不断迭代更新的关键。金融科技亦在不断进化中，人们为今天的金融科技赞叹、欢呼，但明天、后天会有更新、更难以预见的金融科技诞生，可以预见变化的周期会越来越短，它们也必然会一次次冲击现有的金融业态，对金融业形成长期的、深刻的挑战。

未来最有竞争力的金融机构，必然会应时应需而变，除旧布新、革故鼎新，导致不同银行之间竞争的代际差距拉开。以移动互联网、大数据、云计算、人工智能为代表的新一代信息技术的创新和发展，本质上是一场关于金融信息的传输、接收、分析、处理技术的革命，它将进一步打破金融交易和服务在时间和空间上的限制，带来客户需求偏好的改变、服务的便利性和覆盖面扩大，带来服务水平和客户体验大幅提升，带来商业模式、理念和金融文化上的一系列变化。金融的消费、支付、授信和融资核心功能开始进入相互融合、相互促进的新阶段，导致传统意义上的金融业渐行渐远，而一个富有活力与效率的新金融业正渐行渐近。

I first met Mr. Daniel in 2005 in Singapore at The Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards ceremony hosted by The Asian Banker, where China Merchants Bank (CMB) was named "Best Joint-Stock Commercial Retail Bank in Asia" for the first time. When I received the award from the guest presenter, the famous international investor Mr.Jim Rogers, Mr. Daniel walked over enthusiastically to shake my hand and congratulate me. His sincere and approving look left a deep impression on me. From then on, we became good friends and had many interactions. Each time we met, he would share the latest global banking developments, issues faced, and innovative thoughts. His foresight into retail banking development always inspired me profoundly. Mr. Daniel's attention and insights into China's banking industry and CMB's development made me feel deeply that he is an international financial scholar who understands China well and has devoted all his efforts and emotions to studying banking development with unique insights. Especially his sense of crisis about the challenges facing the banking industry and his creative ideas on how to respond, adapt, and rapidly change the situation were refreshing. His book, The Great Transition, exemplifies this by the forward-looking explanations of the challenges and development trends of the banking industry and the review of the banking industry's transformation journey reminded me of CMB's retail strategic transformation.

Looking back today, CMB's retail strategic transformation has become a successful case of commercial bank innovation and development, but at that time, it was also a necessary choice under pressure and rational analysis. Back then, the external environment, constraints, and customer demands faced by China's banking industry were undergoing historic changes. Externally, interest rate marketisation reforms were accelerating, direct financing was rapidly developing, and financial disintermediation was becoming increasingly prominent. From a constraint perspective, the trend of the Basel Accord's capital constraints on banks was becoming more apparent, and the macroprudential management system of finance imposed higher requirements on bank businesses. From a customer demand perspective, with the rapid development of the macro economy, residents' incomes were steadily increasing, and the demand for consumer credit and wealth management was continuously growing. Facing profound changes in the business environment, the traditional growth model of high costs, high spreads, and high capital consumption was fading away, making the transformation and development of commercial banks imperative. Although transformation was a general trend, all contradictions and pressures would focus on the pioneers on the eve of the transformation.

Despite various external opinions at the time, and internal misunderstandings from shareholders to employees, because peers were making big money, while our approach would not only reduce profitability but also require substantial retail investment, the management and board's views were clear, consistent, and firm. We spent three years preparing for the transformation. In 2004, based on a comprehensive analysis of domestic and international economic and financial situations and our development reality, CMB was the first to propose that the retail banking strategy was the "top priority" and began to steadfastly advance the strategic transformation. "Not doing wholesale business means no food today, not doing retail business means no food tomorrow" was the belief in every CMB employee’s heart at that time. Meanwhile, CMB underwent profound changes in service concepts, management systems, and product innovation, establishing a customer-centric service concept of "Changing for You", implementing a matrix management style combining line and regional management, and relying on innovative products such as All-in-One Card and online banking to continuously expand growth space, injecting a constant stream of power into the promotion of retail strategic transformation. Besides our relentless efforts, the success of CMB's retail strategic transformation also benefited from the steady progress of China's economic and financial system reforms, the gradual improvement of regulatory systems, and the continuously growing social demand, providing a good growth soil and vast market space for transformation development.

"One cannot judge the present without knowing the future, understand China without knowing the world, or handle the micro without knowing the macro". The success of any institution’s transformation cannot be separated from the strategic foresight of the future macro direction. Mr. Daniel's book, from historical experience and his own observations, clearly explains the future trends of "financial personalisation" and new concepts like "decentralisation" that break conventional thinking. These are essential references for the banking industry to grasp the future direction and embrace the changes of the times.

Banking is an important field of the service industry, its existence and development depend on market demand, and the changes in demand are determined by technological, social, and economic development. Nowadays, technological development is advancing rapidly, especially with the emergence and rapid progress of artificial intelligence, profoundly impacting various industries and bringing disruptions to many traditional sectors and habits.

Moreover, the increasingly severe climate crisis is forcing the entire world to change production, lifestyle, and thinking modes for survival. In this context, society's demand for finance is urgently and even forcibly changing, with green, low-carbon, and inclusive finance becoming mandatory for the banking industry. These not only change the demand for banks but also rapidly alter the existence value and service methods of banks, signifying an unprecedented great transition. The Great Transition, as elucidated by Mr. Daniel, is likely brewing on a larger scale. This book will bring profound inspiration for understanding the future of finance.

我与以理先生相识在2005年，在新加坡，由《亚洲银行家》主办的亚洲零售金融服务卓越大奖颁奖盛典上，招商银行首次跻身亚洲“最佳股份制商业零售银行”之列。当我从颁奖嘉宾，著名国际投资家罗杰斯先生手中接过奖牌时，以理热情地走过来和我握手并表示祝贺，他那真诚的目光充满赞许和期待，让我印象深刻。从此，我们成了好朋友，有了很多交往，每一次见面他都会向我介绍世界银行发展的最新动态、面临的问题和创新的思考，特别是他对零售银行发展的远见卓识每次都给我带来深刻的启发。以理先生对中国银行业以及招商银行发展的关注和见解，让我深深地感受到他是一位深知中国，且为研究银行业发展倾注了全部心血与感情，并独具慧眼的国际金融学者。尤其是他对银行业面临挑战的危机感，以及如何应对挑战、迅速改变、适应形势的许多创见让我耳目一新，《伟大的转型——金融个性化重塑全球银行业》这本书恰恰印证了这一点。书中他对银行业面临的转型挑战和发展趋势的前瞻性阐释以及银行业转型发展历程的回顾，让我似乎看到了招商银行零售战略转型的影子。

今天回过头来看，招商银行的零售战略转型已经成为商业银行创新发展的成功案例，而在当时的情况下也是一种迫于形势压力、在理性分析之后的必然选择。当时，中国银行业面临的外部环境、约束条件和客户需求都在发生历史性的重大变化。从外部环境看，利率市场化改革加速推进，直接融资快速发展，金融脱媒态势日益凸显。从约束条件看，《巴塞尔协议》对银行资本约束的趋势越来越明显，金融宏观审慎管理制度对银行业务提出了更高要求。从客户需求看，随着宏观经济的快速发展，居民收人稳步提升，对消费信贷和财富管理的需求不断增长。面对经营环境的深刻变化，传统的高成本、高利差、高资本消耗的增长模式已渐行渐远，商业银行的转型发展势在必行。虽然转型已是大势所趋，但转型前夜，所有的矛盾和压力都会集中在先行者身上。

尽管当时外部舆论有各种各样的看法，内部从股东到员工也不理解，因为同行在挣大钱，而我们这样做不仅会减少盈利，还要零售条线大幅投人，但管理层和董事会的意见是明确的、一致的、坚定的。我们用了三年时间做各种准备，2004年，在全面分析国内外经济金融形势的基础上，结合自身发展实际，招商银行率先提出零售银行战略是“重中之重”，并开始坚定不移地推进战略转型。“不做批发业务眼前没饭吃，不做零售业务将来没饭吃”是当时所有招行人心中的信念。与此同时，招商银行在服务理念、管理制度、产品创新等方面深刻变革，确立以客户为中心“因您而变”的服务理念，实行条线管理和区域管理相结合的矩阵式管理方式，依托一卡通、网络银行等创新产品不断拓展成长空间，为推进零售战略转型注入源源不竭的动力。除了自身的不懈努力，招商银行零售战略转型的成功也得益于中国经济金融体制改革的稳步推进和监管制度的逐步完善，不断增长的社会需求也为转型发展提供了良好的成长土壤和广阔的市场空间。

“不知未来者无以评判当下，不知世界者无以理解中国，不知宏观者无以处理微观”，任何一家机构的转型成功都离不开对于未来宏观方向的战略前瞻。而以理先生的这本书，就从历史经验和自身观察出发，以新颖的视角清晰地阐释了“金融个性化”的未来趋势和“去中心化”等打破思维定式的新理念，这些正是银行业把握未来方向、拥抱时代变化的重要借鉴。

银行业是服务业的重要领域，它的存在与发展取决于市场需求，而需求的变化是由科技、社会、经济发展决定的。如今，科技发展日新月异，特别是人工智能的横空出世、突飞猛进正深刻影响着千行百业，给许多传统行业、固有习惯带来颠覆性挑战。

此外，日益严峻的气候危机也在迫使整个世界为了生存而改变生产方式、生活方式和思维方式。在这样的情况下，社会对金融的需求正在急迫地，甚至是强制性地被改变，绿色、低碳、普惠正在成为银行业的必选项。这些不仅改变着对银行的需求，也在迅速改变着银行本身的存在价值和服务方式，所有这一切意味着一场前所未有的大转型的到来，以理先生所阐释的伟大转型或正在更大范围地酝酿着。而此书将为洞悉金融的未来带来深刻的启发。

With the rapid development and iteration of artificial intelligence and digital technology, especially breakthroughs in identity, data, and digital asset technology, the modern financial system and roles are changing rapidly, perhaps beyond our imagination. The future financial world will not be represented by banks, financial companies, or exchanges but by infrastructures such as cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, and blockchains. The Great Transition informs us that these are not science fiction but happenings. Finance is rapidly moving towards decentralisation, depersonalisation, and personalisation.

A few days ago, while attending a forum at the University of Macau, I spent an evening reading Mr. Daniel's The Great Transition. Inspired by the book, I began to continuously ponder the theme of financial personalisation and the future shape of the financial world presented in it. If we took this book to Wall Street in New York, the City of London, Central in Hong Kong, or Lujiazui in Shanghai, could our minds remain calm? Will the financial world we see in 50 years be the same?

In this book, Mr. Daniel wants to tell readers: Haven't you realised? We are undergoing a great transformation unseen in a century. The era of personalised finance is coming. In the future new era, everything can be financialised, and finance will be everyone’s business. This sounds very subversive to our existing views because our current financial needs are handled by large and powerful financial institutions, with individuals hardly able to influence them and almost at their mercy. Financial assets have become the most important and active force in the economy, but in Mr. Daniel's view, these assets will be transferred to personal data in the future. Without personal data, nothing exists. This is the book's theme, personalisation, and democratisation of finance is a global trend.

The importance of this book lies not only in the author's recognition that financial personalisation is an unstoppable trend but also in revealing how to achieve and adapt to this significant transition. Personalisation will have a huge and lasting impact on existing financial organisations, trading markets, regulatory systems, and even the entire society. How these impacts are perceived and acquired, and how countries and governments promote transition in an open system environment, are critical insights provided by this book.

The author, Mr. Daniel, is an exceptionally sharp and insightful thinker and an outstanding entrepreneur. I first met him when I was invited to attend The Asian Banker’s forum and awards ceremony in Beijing. We hit it off immediately. Subsequently, I attended many of The Asian Banker's events. Each time I met Mr. Daniel in Beijing, I was inspired by his charisma and passionate speeches. I believe his success is not only due to his rich international background and the attraction of his organised events but, more importantly, to his global vision and the unique cultural insights he gained from living in China. These have shaped his ability to organically unify commerce and thought and his personal charm, providing him with a unique analytical perspective on many issues. This book consistently demonstrates this trait.

随着人工智能和数字技术的快速发展与迭代，特别是关于身份、数据和数字资产技术的突破，现代金融的体系与角色正在快速改变，其速度可能出乎我们的想象。未来的金融世界不是由银行、金融公司或交易所，而是由加密货币、数字货币、区块链等基础架构呈现出来的。《伟大的转型——金融个性化重塑全球银行业》这本书告诉我们，这些不是科幻，而是正在发生的事情。金融在快速走向分权化、去中心化和个性化。

前几天在澳门大学参加论坛期间，我用了一个晚上读完以理先生的这本《伟大的转型——金融个性化重塑全球银行业》。随后我便受到这本书的启发，开始不停地思考书中提出的金融个性化的主题和未来金融世界的模样。如果我们带着这本书，来到纽约华尔街、伦敦金融城、香港中环或上海陆家嘴，我们大脑深处的思想能平静吗？未来50年我们看到的金融世界还会是这样的吗？

以理在这本书里是想告诉读者：你们难道没有意识到吗？我们正在经历百年未有之大变局。个性化的金融时代就要来临。未来的新时代，万物皆可金融化，而金融则是每个人的事情。听起来这非常颠覆我们已有的观念，因为当前处理我们的金融需求的，是那些庞大的、有实力的金融机构，个人很难对其施加任何影响，几乎只能听凭金融机构的摆布。金融资产成为经济当中最重要也是最活跃的力量，但在以理看来，这些资产在未来都要让渡给个人的数据。没有个人的数据，就没有了一切。这就是本书的主题，金融的个性化和民主化是全球的大趋势。

这本书的重要性不仅在于作者看到了金融个性化是不可阻挡的趋势，更在于向我们揭示了该如何实现和适应这一巨大的转型。个性化将对现有的金融组织、交易市场和监管制度乃至整个社会产生巨大的和持久的影响，这些影响如何被感知和获取，国家和政府如何在一个开放的体制环境中推动转型，这本书提供了重要的思想。

这本书的作者以理是个思想极其敏锐和富有洞见的人，同时也是一位杰出的创业家。我第一次跟他见面是我被邀请出席《亚洲银行家》在北京举办的论坛和颁奖典礼上，我们一见如故。之后我多次出席《亚洲银行家》的活动，每次在北京见到以理，我都被他的号召力和充满激情的话语所鼓舞，我认为他的成功不仅仅因为他丰富的国际背景和他组织的活动所具有的吸引力，更重要的是，他拥有的全球视野和在中国生活所吸收的文化上不同的东西，塑造了他能很好地把商业与思想有机统一的能力和个人魅力，也让他在很多问题上持有独特的分析视角。而这本书处处都展示了这一点。

The story of ice

I use the story of ice, in the words of Richard Sandor “as a pedagogical tool”, to describe what I mean by the “personalization of finance”. Today, we get ice from the refrigerator when we want it, how we want it. It is difficult to imagine that there was a time when ice was sawn out of the lakes of Boston and sent to faraway cities on horse drawn carriages.

Well, money is the same way. The way in which the money is transmitted globally today is totally out of our control, subject to inflation, trade-related exchange rates, bank charges, fraud, government policies and a host of other factors. It is a wonder that the value of the money that finally reaches the end user is nothing close to the value that was originally created or intended (which gives me the excuse to discuss how value itself is captured and shared).

The phrase “personalization” of finance that banks use today means something totally different from what I discuss in the book. Most banks mean that they are able to provide a highly “personalized service” to their customer to make the customer feel as if their products were designed exactly for him or her.

The “personalization” I am talking about in my book is taken to a whole new level, where the user has full control over the origination and use of finance, who he or she chooses to transact with, how, when, why, what. Banks as we know them to be today are not even in the picture. I do allude to cryptocurrency, but again, not in the way it is discussed today.

The magic of cryptocurrencies is not that bitcoin was able to shoot up to $65,000 in price, but that each and every person in the world is now able to issue a cryptocurrency of their very own. Now, whether the “currency” that we issue will be accepted by anyone else is another question altogether. The world is today going through a process of deciding which cryptocurrency to accept and which to reject, this process will take us into the next hundred years and over time some clear guidelines will appear. When we hear about stablecoin frauds and bad algorithms, we are just at the beginning of that journey of learning which ones to validate and which ones to reject, now that anyone and everyone can issue a crypto.

The refrigeration technology that transformed the ice trade was found in a synthetic chemical called “chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) that made refrigeration possible. I go into trying to discussing what the “chlorofluorocarbon of finance” should or would be.

The financialization of everything

As more assets, from mortgages to cars and shares are represented by data, and that data become “non-fungible” (that is specific to that asset and not interchangeable) because of technology like blockchain, and as more of our every day lives, from driving an autonomous vehicle to running a factory are captured and managed by data, almost everything we do will be represented by data that we can slice and dice in many different ways to give us meaning.

Even as all that data is digitized, the financial markets will look for ways to securitize them and then trade on them, and even trade on derivatives of data, and derivatives of derivatives. The source of the 2008 banking crisis was the financialised versions of mortgages, not the mortgages themselves. We are going to see more, not less, of this trend in the years ahead.

We will go through a period where the markets will test all kinds of data to see if they can be securitized and traded. We will find that not all data can be securitized and traded. It is this process of continuously testing all kinds of digital data to see how we can financialise them that is called the “financialization of everything”.

But data is a ruthless commodity. Many early technology players wanted to be able to say that data is the new gold. In my book, I point out how in the past 10 years alone, the early data companies have been ruthlessly commoditized despite having very promising starts. Read my book to see why I say that data is actually vegetable.

The mass-amateurization of finance

Here, I am saying that banks totally missed out on the API (application programming interfaces) revolution. Giant businesses from Microsoft to Adobe have modified their business models to generate income from the APIs that their customers create to interact with them. Bankers still think of a “product” as something manufactured inside a financial institution and sold to its customers. We are coming into an age where customers create their own products.

The financial sector totally missed out on the early days of the API revolution. While many other industries opened up their businesses for their customers to generate their own interfaces in order to interact, personalize and use their services, the banking industry instead continued to protect itself against its own customers. The excuse given, and it was an understandable one, was that banks hadto protect their data. But what was not well understood was that bank data is static, historical and increasingly meaningless in an increasingly networked world. For creating products and for ensuring the very security of the banks in a networked world, the live, realtime data outside the bank is becoming more important than the static data that sits inside the bank.

In the process, the banking industry has reduced its well-meaning API vendors into what I call the “patch solution” providers. The banks published a list of problems that needed to be solved on their delipidated systems, and these technology vendors used API-access to try and solve some of them, which was not the intention of the technology. In the meantime, the mass amateurization of finance blazes unabated in industries like publishing, gaming and trading where everybody is a producer of his or her own product or service.

As I discuss in the book, understanding the “mass-amateurization of finance” is important to be able to crack some of the problems that the early peer-to-peer (P2P) and even Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) have had. These industries might have a resurgence when the industry better understands what it means for customers to design their own products.

The history of innovation

In my book, I spend some time retracing the history of innovation in general, especially in the past 50 years, since the end of Bretton Woods, so that we can be clear about what actually happened in the history of banking. This will help those who are making the transition to the next phase to know what they are dealing with.

In the 1990s, US corporation underwent their most severe “capital-versus-labour” stand-off, and in my book, I explain why capital won. The capitalist “shareholder value” generals took manufacturing and processing to cheaper countries like China and India in order to resist the unions demand for wage increases. This is why wages in the US have not kept up with inflation for nearly 30 years.

The banking industry also had its own version of the “capital-versus-labour” stand-off. The rise of fintechs can be explained in the context of that stand-off, because in many cases, the fintech phenomenon is an outsourcing of bank operating costs to the armies of out-of-job ex-bankers, now able to automate any bank processes on Java programming which inadvertently subsidises the banks and their shareholders.

Understanding the history of innovation also helps us understand the nature of venture capital, and whether it helps choose the next transformational technologies that will define finance. Read the book to find out why I say that in finance, venture capitalists follow and not lead.

The institution crumbles

I loved writing this phrase, “the cookie crumbles”. When I say that banks as institutions will crumble like a cookie, I get a lot of push back from traditional bankers who say that the finance world will still need intermediation, that rumours of the death of banking are premature. I am happy to have all these out in the open for discussion.

Banks are crumbling, from the inside on their balance sheets, and from the outside as new intermediaries replicate what they can do and do it better, cheaper, faster. From the inside, their cost base is being squeezed and they are incredibly asset heavy when the industry is moving towards an asset-lite model. They carry more capital than industries that have more capital intensive assets.

Also, they have considerable difficulty in holding together the governance required to manage complex institutions. I discuss the story of Deutsche Bank, which had its origins as a domestic commercial bank in Germany, and then went on to integrate with an investment bank in London. The culture created, the personalities that drove them and how this story is repeated again and again today. Banks are their own worst enemies.

From the outside, very simply, whatever a bank can do, a teenager can do on self-developed applications in the comfort of his or her home, almost literally. Trading, staking, lending, paying. At the moment, some of these developments are at “geek” levels, which means only computer nerds even understand how to do them. But over time, these applications will become easier to use and with greater processing power and generation Z will come into their own very soon. There is also the discussion on the reddit revolution, thousands of individual investors acting against the institutional players.

I am happy to have this idea debated passionately in any forum. But whether banks crumble or not will depend entirely how they morph and change their business models to suit the demands of the age.

From platforms to personalization

Early in the book, I discuss the fact that we forget that Facebook almost did not make that transition from desktop to mobile in the 2008-2010 period. Today, we see that Facebook is officially in decline and that mobile-native applications such as Tik Tok are on the rise. These transitions are subtle but profound, and still the incumbent players refuse to recognise them until it is too late.

The transition that is to come is from platforms to personalization. The onset of greater data privacy and developments in identity, transactional and blockchain technologies enable individuals to decide who, when and how they wish to interact with, without having to surrender their data to the platforms of today. These, together with token technologies are shifting the power of the relationship from the platform to the individual.

The power of platform players still have a long way to go, there are still platforms to be created in many areas of business and society for many years to come. But the incidences surrounding data privacy, electoral rigging and the use of algorithms for factious outcomes are changing the definition of what a platform should be. Even in the blockchain and cryptocurrency worlds, individuals are increasingly opting out of trading platforms and public wallets, and increasingly using technologies that gives them greater control over their own digital assets. The direction of the trend is clear.

This discussion is especially useful for digital-bank pioneers. Almost all digital banks are not designed to make money even in the current regime. It will become worse as customers personalize finance. Players who are trying to ace the platform game by trying to become platforms themselves have to start thinking about a world where the power of the relationship rests with the individual.

Even as I discuss far-flung ideas that are only in their preliminary stages of development, in my book, I apply those ideas back to current players and the roadmaps they are creating.

The power of the dysfunctional state

When we think about which country or society will spearhead the transformation of finance, history shows us that it was never the most organised state or the most stable banking system that made those transitions. Transitions in finance are always achieved in periods of duress, deep economic stress and turmoil.

The Bretton Wood agreement fell apart because the US could not carry enough gold to support the increasingly trade weighted exchange rates with other currencies. So, it unilaterally walked out of the deal, despite its most eminent economists counselling against such a move. The rest of the world just copied the US in generating fiat currencies that were increasingly based on nothing except perception. Similarly, the reason the US dollar became the global currency was precisely because the US didn’t care how its currency was used outside it’s own border.

Through these and other examples, I make the case that the futures of finance, cryptocurrencies (read bitcoin nation), stablecoins, CBDCs and even the internationalization of the renminbi will be determined from what nation states do during periods of extreme stress, and not from the policies that a congress or a central bank can pontificate on as a rational exercise. At the same time, I am asking the reader to look out for the other dysfunctional states and their influence on what may be outlier technologies today. There are videos on my social media on my visits to El Salvador and other states where I am learning first-hand how new eco-systems are created.

Blockchain, killed in the back-office

There are literally hundreds of bank-sponsored blockchain projects around the world, but almost all of them have been in pilot mode for at least 4-5 years now. I dedicated an entire section to explain why all the projects in blockchain technology in banking today are designed to fail, not because of the technology, but because of the way banks are organised and the excessive remuneration given to their ever-bloated compliance teams.

I also believe that the API (application programming interface) phenomenon in finance also lost its way. Both phenomenon are alive and well in many other industries, from logistics to technology and even social impact projects, but not in finance.

I do not say this explicitly in the book, but if you study the way that financial institutions, including central banks, are organised, I also see that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are almost all designed to fail or fall by the way side.

The sheer energy and global manpower that is being put into the design and features of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins makes CBDCs unable to compete with the breakthroughs. In fact, right now, almost all CBDCs are still in their pilot stages simply because their technology teams are merely mimicking the features that are being thrown up in the permissionless world. The CBDCs that have gone live account for less than one percent of the payment transactions in their respective countries.

I will have more to say on this as these industries develop, and you can find my comments in future commentaries, videos and training that I will be giving to disruptors in finance. But the line of thought is already in the book.

The Libor crisis, again

In one of the most passionate section of the book, I make the case that the LIBOR crisis of 2010 was not one borne out of fraud, but by a confusion when a system transitions from one phase to the next. In the case of the LIBOR crisis, the financial sector was moving from its “institutional” to its “markets” phase. I borrowed this idea from an understated intellectual by the name of David Ronfeldt, from a paper he wrote for the RAND Corporation in 1996, in the days when fax machines were still roaming freely on the face of the earth. Today, as society moves from its “markets” phase to the “networked” phase, similar incidences are wanton to surface and they are not because professionals go to work in the morning to defraud their employers.

In the “markets” phase, people trade between each other, and the highest bidder secures a transaction and the seller loses the asset. In the “networked” phase, the asset gains in value the more it is shared. Think about information – it is the only asset that actually increases in value the more it is shared.

Remember, despite all the fanfare, almost nobody was ever convicted for LIBOR, except for one on a matter of technicality, and even that case is currently on review. The problem is that if we do not diagnose the phenomenon correctly, we risk labelling it wrongly every single time and failing to guide the institution to the next phase.

The next financial crisis

Americans have way of framing every major event in the context of a similar event in the past, as they do in sports. The “best score inning since the Red Sox against the Tigers in 1953” is used in finance to describe “the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.”

This framing of events makes even economists to load their data sets with assets that are similar in Amsterdam in 1663 as they are in 2008 and come up with perspectives that say that “no, this time it is not different.” The euphoria and the public sentiments that feed a financial crisis may not be different, but the essence of the assets certainly does change over time, and it is important to keep an eye on the ball, and not reminiscent a past era.

As I was writing the book, and mapping the transitions that the industry has undergone, it occurred to me that the crisis that the Basel I regime dealt with was fundamentally different from that of Basel II and the assets in the crisis that Basel III was promulgated to protect against was again different. At each stage the asset in banking was moving away from the underlying mortgages to securities and then to markets and then to (read the book). If we extrapolate that into the future, the assets in finance are becoming increasingly more ephemeral. This in tun will have an effect on the conditions that will be necessary to trigger the next financial crisis. Read the book for a more in-depth discussion on this.

Russia and Ukraine

In 2008, the finance industry was caught up with its own woes so much that it totally did not contemplate the technological breakthroughs that were taking place at that time that were going to have a more fundamental impact on its future than the global banking crisis. In the same way, the Russian-Ukraine war as well as other new developments in technology that are taking place today are going to shape the industry we can only imagine today. The Financial Stability Board, the Bank for International Settlement and other agencies charged with ensuring global financial order are in the direct firing line as economic blocs dig in. At the same time, some of the projects that we are caught up with, including central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), may well not match the rhetoric we give them. These might also facilitate non-partisan technologies that no one party can dictate or dominate. I have a list of current developments that we need to put on the table to see where they will play in the next 10 years.

The great transitions

By the time you get to this Key Idea, you would realise that there are actually several great transitions in my book. The main one is the one which I have explained in the “From Platforms to Personalization” Key Idea. The second one is from “Tribes to Networks”, an idea I borrowed from an amazing intellectual who should be given more recognition that he has for his lifetime’s work. I have used both transitions to chart how the future of finance will evolve. We are transitioning from the markets world that we have become so accustomed to, into the networked world.

That is why the people who are still trapped in a markets view of the world cannot understand why bitcoin, a totally useless digital asset, is commanding the attention that it does. In the same way, the people who are “network natives” are often ahead of their time, because every time there is a crisis in the digital assets that they believe in, their faith is shaken. The industry will develop not because one or the other is right. It is already on its journey.