How could a brand-new retail bank be designed today to outperform incumbents like Bank of America and Chase, including which less-obvious features to add or omit?

Service. At the end of the day, consumers look for stellar services and will be happy to huddle around that offering. Simple.com is a classical example of how great customer experience and product offering can be morphed using the existing banking products/services and layering in between the customer.

Banking is changing. Email obliterated the fax machine. Mobile phones did the same to the landline. Mobile Banking Wallets will do the same to the traditional bank account (branch account).

Mobile/Online banking is not only an obvious feature set, but itself the new butterfly. It has evolved from the bank channels as we have traditionally known. Mobile Banking is the new banking and should not be considered as a product offering or an alternate delivery channel. Herein lies the mistake that many banks/bankers fail to see.

The retail banks need not be designed around the traditional brick-and-mortar scenario, but around the email, telephone, data model. UI/UX experiences need to be frictionless and the ability to transact, in a ubiquitous manner with anyone else and any payment instrument of choice on any carrier or phone set of my choice.