You're No Apple, You're a Bank

Happened on Heather Landy's last column for American Banker. Financial-services folks, she notes, seem fixated on emulating the success of Apple and Amazon.  That's not easy.

For example, while a focus on cross-selling makes perfectly good sense as a general business strategy, it doesn't hold up very well in an Apple business model context. Notice how when you visit an Apple store, nobody ever says, "Well, sir/ma'am, I see you have one of our phones. Have you considered trying one of our tablets?" There's no need to push products on us because we already know that we want them. We'll even line up around the block to get them. (Whereas a line around the block is never a good sign for a bank.)

Can banks develop a cross-buying culture? Can they give us new conveniences even more welcome than those smart credit cards the Europeans enjoy?

Can they create true wealth-management centers, units so innovative and quality-obsessed that customers clamor for the privilege of a referral?

We'll see.

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Landy is leaving her post as editor in chief of American Banker Magazine to join Quartz as global news editor.