FinTech, BigTech, and the Future of Banks

In 1994, Bill Gates famously said that banks are dinosaurs. Since then, bank assets in the U.S. have more than quadrupled (from $3.7 trillion to $17.4 trillion) while the number of banks has fallen by more than 50% (from 10,453 to less than 5,000). Today, we have many fewer, but much larger banks. With the Internet came many efforts to disrupt the banking industry, including the emergence of online banks. These banks did not supplant existing banks. Instead, existing banks made online banking available to their customers.