I have made many mistakes, in my life, in predicting the future.
It is important for me to remember my erroneous predictions. That is how I learn.
In 1994 it appeared to me that banking didn't have much of a future other than ATM machines.
The reason I said that was that the deposit function appeared to be the only still valuable service the banks provided the public and corporations. Most lending functions had already moved to other institutions. For example, lending was going into the hands of special mortgage brokers who worked with insurance companies for the residential mortgage market and corporate loans were coming from specialized money brokers in the short term money market.
What I didn't recognize is that banks have a significant advantage in the source of funds because the Federal Reserve is always making money available to banks at lower than the market rate. Moreover the other issue I didn't see was that savings and loans, that had been a major source of residential lending, no longer had a future because they were so dangerously out of control that banks would be forced to take them in-house. Lastly, I failed to realize that the large institutions including insurance companies and unions were relatively bad at making loans to commercial borrowers. While banks are both too cautious and inefficient they are definitely more confident at maintaining good long term relations with the corporate world. This cannot be replaced by a mixture of other large financial institutions that lack the day to day contact that is so beneficial to banks.
Banks have also prospered by becoming national, merging and becoming gigantic. They are so big they are able to pay billion dollar fines to the government for preposterous bad government behavior. Banks are here to stay. They have acclimated very effectively to the commercial environment of our era.