In a sense, if you’ve been reading Ron Shevlin’s Snarketing 2.0 blog, now part of The Financial Brand, you have already read his book Smarter Bank, published Jan. 30. Much of the material is familiar, but lacking the vibrant comment section that followed those online posts. So why would anyone in FinTech or financial services spend some precious time to read this book?

Well, the material has been reworked and tightened, arguments clarified, and new points added. More to the point, re-reading a little bit of Shevlin’s writing isn’t such a bad idea for anyone in the industry.

His work has expanded beyond research reports and blogposts to the airwaves — his “Moment of Snark” is now part of Brett King’s “Breaking Banks” radio show.

The book makes many arguments — where King and Chris Skinner may expound grandly on a theme, Shevlin is always arguing, and working to back up the argument with data — but the most fundamental is that the retail banking model is broken, and banks aren’t doing what they need to do to fix it. Banks, Shevlin says, are holding onto a business model built when the return on equity was many times greater than it is today. Those heady times are not returning, so the business model — in its simplest form, the balancing act between debit and credit — must change.

He makes a number of engaging points, and, in the interest of not spoiling the book, here are just five of them:

1. Banking is — or should be — about managing money, not moving money. FIs (and startups) should drop the obsession with payments and P2P and focus on helping consumers manage their money better. Shevlin calls out Simple and Moven for making positive moves in this direction. This is the subtitle of the book, and explicitly refers to PFM — not budgeting and pie charts, but much more — as the future of retail banking. Mobile is just a device, PFM can be much more.
2. A lot of the studies about banking are nonsensical. Shevlin is at his best skewering studies with less-than-stellar methodologies. Studies saying that Gen Y customers don’t want credit cards (another reason banks are supposedly doomed) aren’t back up by hard data. Oh, and just because 52% of customers say they “might prefer” banking with Apple or Google doesn’t mean Bank of America is going out of business.
3. Some truisms in banking simply aren’t true. “Investment in mobile and shrinking branch networks means branches are going away.” Really? Shevlin begs to differ, and offers a compelling argument that total deposits are steadily climbing, and it is only poorly performing branches that are closing. Further, he argues that branches will never go away. They will change, certainly, but banks couldn’t close them all even if they wanted to. (For one thing, the regulators would throw a fit.)
4. Social media use in banking is poorly understood. Social media may be a big deal to banks, or it may not be. Shevlin tends to think the latter, and argues for testing the ROI on social media — anathema to many social media zealots. Social media metrics are simply a waste of time, Shevlin argues, and a Facebook “like” does not equal a new customer, nor will a Facebook post net a bank heaps of prospects. The people who read your social media posts and like them are already your most engaged customers. You’re preaching to the choir, and, when it comes down to it, what does your bank have to say on social media that is so interesting? And don’t even get him started on Big Data (“complete and utter delusion”).
5. His one-liners (aka “Shevlinisms”). Shevlin is popularly (and correctly) identified as the funniest man in banking. Here are just a very few of his gems — the book has dozens.
   • On mobile payments: “Few customers are interested in Near Field Communication payments because to the Average Joe on the street NFC stands for National Football Conference.”
   • On why the definition of ‘Underbanked’ includes having a bank account: “If that makes sense to you, you belong in Washington, DC.”
   • On family: “As a wannabe legitimate market researcher, I would never publish research results based on an insufficient sample, but from time to time I use my wife and/or daughters as sanity checks (which is ironic, since I usually blame them for my insanity).”

For all its snark and wisecracks, every point Shevlin makes is based on solid research, which is more than you can say about most writing (including this blogpost).

Shevlin’s book can be found online here.