Banking Fundamentals — Part 2: Retail Banking in the Digital Age

Summary: The second session in the Banking Fundamentals series examines how digital disruption has dismantled the geographic moats that once defined retail banking. The session maps the core retail product stack — liabilities as fuel, assets as revenue, fees as engagement — and dissects the unit economics of retail banking through the CAC versus LTV lens. It contrasts the neobank challenger model against traditional incumbents across structure, revenue, competitive advantage, and weakness, and presents the three-phase neobank evolution from distribution-first to lending to full charter acquisition. The session concludes with an analysis of how embedded finance and BNPL are relocating banking to the point of transaction.