Battle of the Banks: Fintech vs the Old Guard

There was once a time when the bank — perhaps your high-street Lloyds or, if you were a boy of international aspirations, the town’s flagship HSBC — was the place where you marked the most formative moments of your life: substituting the gloss of a ceramic piggy bank for the digits, sterility and promise that came with a young saver’s account; dipping in for a mortgage in return for the safety of four walls, a roof and years of repayment that never seem to find an end; or simply tapping an ATM’s pad in hope of a pretty good, rudderless weekend ahead.