Nonbank competitors are pushing aggressively into banking and investment services, forcing firms to make the right strategy and technology decisions or risk losing control of the financial relationship. Gartnersays that although many of the new technologies available hold promise, others will fail to meet expectations and should be approached cautiously.

“By 2010, social-banking platforms will have captured 10% of the available market for retail lending and financial planning.”

Yeah, but ING which was strutting around with its Second Life presence during a Financial News b anking conference in London in late spring, has just announced it is pulling out of the avatar world.

“By 2010, 10 percent of banks’ revenue from retail payments will be supported by competitors such as PayPal.”

This is real. I was talking about PayPal with a UK banking expert over lunch in London today and he says that small businesses are finding PayPal cheaper and easier to use than getting a credit card account. But he also said that PayPal, as it grows, will face some of the usual enteprise-resilience and security issues.

“By 2010, U.S. banks will start shutting down their full-service mobile-banking channels.”

EVen if they face competition from telcoms, I don’t think they can afford to shut down mobile. Gartner needs some 19-year old analysts—that would give them a whole different perspective on it. Take a lesson from Rabobank which markets its own mobile phone service, through a third-party provider, and has captured a significant slice of a youth market.

“By 2011, centralized retail core banking applications will cease to exist in at least 20 percent of banks worldwide.”

I don’t know on this one—Gartner sounds confused. It might be a biz-IT war, or some vendors might offer decent low-risk transition. Really attractive core replacement systems are rare—I see Temenos getting some play, SAP threatening, TCS, perhaps iFlex...and I have heard Financial Objects is doing well here and there in Europe...SlaterLabs? Good name, but not much of a track record. So will banks outsouce this? I doubt it—and Gartner may be vastly over-estimating banks’ willingness to take some radical direction.