Utopia?

“Mom, can you print me up a hamburger!”,  such were the prophetic word of George Jetson’s boy Elroy, to his mom Jane in the famous 1960’s eponymous cartoon series “The Jetsons”. 

Well is looks like this day is getting closer and closer to reality based on the current view of RethinkX  founder Tony Seba.  Seba is predicting that the number of cattle in the US will decrease 50% by the year 2030 based on Silicon Valley’s “food-as-a-software” technology for manufacturing protein.  This clearly has a huge impact on the Australian Beef & Diary Industries.

A Disrupted Business Model

A perfect storm of fast-improving technology, new business models, and fast-falling costs is set to create the deepest, most consequential disruption of food and agriculture in ten thousand years. Australia faces the end of the beef & diary industry as we know it, and the exponential market growth of inexpensive, high-quality, tasty modern food designed using technology based on precise consumer specifications. At least this is the prediction coming out of the Tony Seba’s US based RethinkX Think Tank who are devoted to predicting and analysing the future economic consequences of technology disruption.

Food-as-a-Software

What is scary is that this potential disruption is following a very predictable path. Originally very expensive to produce, technology advances have accelerated to a position where Silicon Valley now uses the term “food as a software” technology to describe this industry disrupter. Technology created protein is predicted to be 10 time cheaper than animal produced protein by 2035. Whilst many could not ever see themselves eating anything else than a big juicy T-Bone Steak, there was a time where I could never see myself reading a newspaper online and who would ever think that KFC would offer meatless chicken.

“Your organisation is perfectly designed for the results that you achieve” – W.Edwards Demming

It’s Too Hard

The big four banks have attacked ASIC’s responsible lending proposals as impractical, anti-competitive and potentially damaging to the economy in a series of defensive submissions. (AFR 2/7/19). At the centre of this is what the banks consider the impractical recommendation that the HEM (House Expenditure Method used to estimate expenditure in a loan application) be scrapped and the banks review actual individual customers household expenditure. This is considered too labour intensive and time consuming to be of practical application, so the banks say.

So, what is this Fintech you speak of?

One only has to do a cursory search to find a myriad of consumer apps that can analyse household expenditure with little more than a click, swipe or drag. Surely with a burgeoning Fintech sector and advances in AI we have solved the Dickensian world of manual loan applications long ago?

All this protestation whilst the “Open Banking” regime began on the 1^st July. Open Banking enables the consumer to direct that they, or their bank, be provided with their transaction data in a secure environment. This data can than be used to offer  banking products that are better suited to their needs a.k.a. “loans they can afford through the economic cycle”.

So why are banks whinging about the time and effort to analysis lenders transaction data to verify actual household expenditure as per the ASIC recommendation. Is it just because is wasn’t in a Royal Commission recommendation? Is this retribution?

Can’t Trust You as Far as I Can Throw You!

All banks have stated that in the wake of the Royal Commission rebuilding trust is a major strategic priority. This stance makes a complete mockery of that proposition. It benefits shareholder not consumers. You would think that the banks would be jumping at a chance to help a potential customer understand that their spending habits and household situation mean that a small change in either their income or bank interest rates could mean significant financial hardship?

“Your organisation is perfectly designed for the results that you achieve” – W.Edwards Demming