Why no one can handle technology risk

IT missteps can destroy banks – boards need to take them seriously, argues author Patrick McConnell

Banking is an information-processing business and financial institutions have always been in the forefront of adopting new information-processing technologies, from card sorters in the 1960s to internet banking in the early 2000s and, recently, high-frequency trading software.

But within the last decade, as a result of new technologies such as smartphones, the balance of power between financial institutions and their customers has reversed. In the twentieth century, banks decided when and how t