BS&T Executive Summit: If They Were Banks...

During the opening session of this year's Bank Systems & Technology Executive Summit, US Bancorp EVP and chief strategy officer Mac McCullough discussed how, in 2007, the bank developed the Enterprise Revenue Office (ERO), with an eye on cultivating more organic growth.Innovation is a key virtue of the ERO, with its aims around improving long-term growth and increasing customer focus. And so, when the organization was just getting off the ground, McCullough said it looked to other industries for examples of innovation, such as PayPal's work in P2P payments.

In a related exercise, McCullough recalled that the ERO also imagined what companies in other industries would do if they were banks. And so here, taken directly from my conference notes, are a few examples he used:

Starbucks: Mass Personalization- attractive to customers but a nightmare for IT.

Google: Simple and Relevant- delivering something that consumers want and need.

Amazon: help customers find the best product for them, providing updates when a bank consumer is "pre-approved" to shop.

Toyota: back end operations that understand what the customer wants, improved efficiency

Under those examples, I decided to come up with a few of my own "If they were a bank" hypotheticals:

LA Clippers: out of business

Subway: would offer $5 annual checking, but charge $2.95 for a soda and chips

Apple: would create a specialized mobile banking device of unrivaled design and capability; device's battery would need to be replaced the day after warranty ends.

Jet Blue: great customer-facing tools; however, customers would occasionally find themselves trapped for 5 hours in an ATM vestibule.

Bank Systems & Technology: devilishly handsome employees

Dunder Mifflin: old-fashioned product offerings; poor regional management

If you can think of any other examples, please use the comments section.