In 2014, what was the biggest unsolved challenge facing the banking industry?

There are many problems in the banking world that are still not solved on a globally accepted level. Individually (in smaller or more restricted geographic regions) they may have very well been solved.

Some problem areas:

• Universal KYC database (to be able to provide a standardized form of identity parameters)
• Open-APIs (even within the financial community) to check on cross-border, cross-state, inter-bank identity verification.
• Universal bank account number (IBAN is still too nascent), SWIFT is usually needed to tie in a cross-border payment, elsewhere, it is a mash-up of long-worded instruction sets.
• Sub-decimals payments (micro payments)
• Instantaneous bank-to-bank settlements (across the world). So perhaps a better way to look at it is to have a worldwide real-time clearing house. A similar tangential example is the TCP/IP packet. It finds a route on how to get to its destination - via a standardized mechanism. Payments should also be able to go in the same manner as internet packets.
• Remodeling or restructuring the payment protocol. We need an internet ready payment protocol (Ripple, Bitcoin are examples that come to mind, but much work still needs to be done).
• Equivalent of Cash payments online, worldwide.