The branch was never the point

When was the last time you opened your banking app because you wanted to, not because you had to check a balance?

I ask because I can't remember the last time I did. Robinhood, and apps like it, aren't winning because they're prettier. They're winning because they think for you: nudging, adjusting, investing, without you doing the boring part. That's not a UX upgrade. That's a different relationship with money.

Meanwhile ANZ, CommBank, the big names: they're not losing deposits. Not yet. What they're losing is the reason you'd open their app at all. And once an AI does the thinking better than the branch manager did, the branch manager was never really the product. The infrastructure underneath it was.

The banks that survive this won't be the ones with the most branches. They'll be the ones honest enough to admit the branch was never the point.

I make myself go first on things like this. Watching my own money move away from "which bank" toward "which app thinks better" was the first sign.