CW@60: From the Medici to machines - banking’s next renaissance
On 22 September 2026, Computer Weekly turns 60. To mark the milestone, we asked some of our friends - experts, trusted contacts, IT leaders and suppliers - for their perspectives on how tech has changed their lives over six decades
By
Alvaro Garrido, Standard Chartered
Published: 01 Jul 2026
On 22 September 1966, the launch issue of the world’s first weekly technology newspaper was published – today Computer Weekly is the UK’s oldest business IT title. What's changed the most for you since then? Here, Alvaro Garrido, CIO at Standard Chartered, examines how today’s technologies are driving a new banking renaissance .
Banking has reinvented itself before. Most notably in 15th century Florence, where the Medici family, an influential family of merchants and moneylenders, helped transform fragmented moneylending into a systemised financial infrastructure.
Early innovations they pioneered – double-entry book-keeping and letters of credit – fundamentally changed how money, trade and trust operated at scale. Their innovations did not just change finance – they scaled trust. Today, we are at a similar inflection point.
For decades, banking remained largely physical and operational at its core. Customers visited branches to open accounts. Trades were placed over the phone with a relationship manager. Money was deposited into ATMs or sent overseas via telegraphic transfers. Transactions relied heavily on paper, cash and manual verification processes. Technology existed mainly in the background: supporting operations quietly, only appearing in the spotlight when systems failed. What matters now is not access to banking, but quality client experience.
From transactions to experiences
Over the past few decades, that largely physical model has been rewritten. Today, technology shapes how money moves, how trust is built, and how customers experience banking across borders and platforms. Banking is increasingly intuitive, embedded and always on.
Customers access financial services through mobile devices, perform banking transactions with applications, and trade on digital platforms. Cross-border transactions can now settle in near real-time, while digital wallets and alternative financial platforms are expanding access to financial services beyond traditional banking infrastructure. One of the earliest inflection points came when compute power was commoditised and networked computing architectures emerged.
This fundamentally reshaped how banks approached their technology infrastructure, scalability and connectivity. They were no longer restricted by isolated systems or physical limitations. The advent of internet banking and more critically, mobile banking, has accelerated banking’s evolution into a live, always-on experience. Customer expectations have been permanently altered because technology has made banking immediate, continuous and deeply integrated into daily life.
Redefining trust in a digital world
Today, digital banking is more than just account access, transferring money or making payments. It is about creating and delivering intuitive, connected experiences that remove friction from financial interactions, make data-driven and personalised recommendations and integrate with the wider financial ecosystem.
This very transformation that has elevated customer experiences and reshaped expectations has also redefined trust in banking. The physical nature of banking – visiting a branch, speaking with a relationship manager or the very institution itself – was what forged trust for hundreds of years. In the digital era, trust has become increasingly invisible. It was forged through resilience, security, transparency and consistency of the customer experience.
The next era will be defined not just by technological capability, but by how effectively we combine innovation with resilience, security and human judgment
Alvaro Garrido, Standard Chartered
As banking becomes more interconnected through application programming interfaces (APIs), embedded finance models and open banking ecosystems, the importance of cyber security, data governance and real-time risk management has grown. Customers now expect banking services to be not only fast and convenient, but secure as well.
With scam losses in Asia alone exceeding $688bn, the importance of keeping customer data secure and protecting them from cyber crime and scams has never been higher. The same innovations that have been applied to the banking experience – advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) – are now being deployed in the fight against cyber crime to detect fraud, recognise anomalies and enable banks to respond more effectively to threats.
The enduring constant: people and trust
This transformation is not only reshaping customer expectations and operational resilience, but also redefining leadership. Change starts at the top and modern-day banking leaders must wholly buy into the overall transformative process which they are entrenching across the entire organisation.
Over 90% of global enterprises will face critical technology skills shortages this year, especially in AI, data science and cyber security.
Training and upskilling remain key as banks experiment with blockchain and AI. Skills to better understand the capabilities and limitations of AI; data literacy to better interpret data; workflow engineering to redesign processes; and digital thinking to better understand how systems connect will be key skills for banking employees of the future to possess.
Leaders must be willing to make these investments and challenge their own beliefs as they embrace these new changes. A new generation has entered or is entering the workforce. They do not necessarily hold traditional finance or banking qualifications, are proficient with technology and have different motivations and incentives when it comes to pursuing a career in finance.
Leaders must navigate the evolving employee profiles alongside the ongoing transformation of banking itself. Change cannot happen overnight and there will be challenges along the way, but constant experimentation, curiosity and a willingness to embrace change will hold them in good stead for the future.
The move to ambient, intelligent banking
As banks continue to navigate the ebbs and flows of technology, transformation, the future of work and a next-generation workforce, banking will become ambient and anticipatory. Banking experiences are now already intuitive and increasingly being integrated into e-commerce ecosystems, messaging environments, and digital workflows.
Customers are no longer interacting with tellers, but with agentic AI chatbots. Through natural language processing and pattern recognition, various digital platforms, AI agents and intelligent systems will coordinate banking activities for customers. Banking will become more natural, contextual, personalised and outcome driven.
New innovations will continue to orchestrate what banking becomes in the near future. Digital assets, tokenisation and stablecoins can redefine how value moves. Blockchain-based smart contracts enable more efficient, transparent and interoperable financial ecosystems, particularly in payments, trade finance and asset servicing. Interacting with AI agents will become the norm, but they will be hybrid models where these AI agents augment human expertise. Relationship managers, advisors and technologists will remain vital. Quantum computing could unlock new capabilities in portfolio optimisation, simulation modelling and cyber security.
From the Medici to modern digital ecosystems, one principle remains unchanged - banking is built on trust. The next era will be defined not just by technological capability, but by how effectively we combine innovation with resilience, security and human judgment. Technology will continue to transform banking. But it is people – those willing to adapt, experiment and lead through change – who will determine its success.
Alvaro Garrido is chief operating officer, technology and operations, and CIO, information security and data, at Standard Chartered.
