To explain the remarkable technology innovation coming out of Israel, one Israeli entrepreneur once said that in the tiny nation, “there’s zero tolerance for work-arounds.,”

This is the kind of attitude we are looking forward to seeing aimed squarely at fintech. Indeed, on Oct. 22-23, Leumi, one of Israel’s largest banks, will be hosting a hackathon to “invent the bank of tomorrow.” (Full disclosure: Bank Innovation is a media partner for the event.)

Well, we have little patience for platitudes here at Bank Innovation, so when the bar is set at “inventing the bank of tomorrow,” we expect nothing less. But what exactly does that mean? Leumi is rightly having hackers focus on six key areas:

• Virtual money
• Bank-client user experience
• Bank-client social media
• Business apps
• Gamification
• Internet of things

Yes, those are spot on, but there is more at stake here than just figuring out how to make a savings account “fun.” Bank Innovation recently conducted a survey of banking industry executives to find our what’s really happening in banking innovation. We asked the bankers to “describe what banking will be like in 2019.” Most of the responses were just heartless, or even flat out unimaginative. Some examples:

Not that much different from today – only “small changes”. Innovation in finance will require much more time than in other industries.

* * *

I would suspect more as we see it now. There will be some players who move to branchless and improve mobile and internet services.

* * *

Would love to see the demise of paper in banking. Not sure we will ever truly see it since the Regulators equate paper with compliance

* * *

That’s hard to say. For the longest time industry experts have spoken about the “New Branch” etc, but it hasn’t really changed. Branches are still full of tellers, loan officers, and live customer service reps just as they were 10 or 20 years ago. The prediction is to have less bodies, more computers and self service options available to customers at the branches, but it hasn’t happened, yet. I think this is due to user/customer adoption. When it comes to money, I believe customers like to be able to speak to someone in person and understand what is happening with their money.

Sure, not every response was as limp as a demo tech after Finovate.

I think banks will keep the processes and back-end transaction models while new non-bank entities will be left with costumers. That means that these applications will have the relationship with customers and to be better able to provide solutions integrating the entire ecosystem of consumer-financing.

But even the responses that seemed more didn’t have much oomph in them. Which is why hackathons like the one Leumi will present next month matter. The hackathon is not just about solutions or applications, but about energy, vitality, spunk. Let’s hope after the “36 straight hours” of coding — and zero tolerance for workarounds — the result is not just a group of ravaged coders, but a glint of excitement for the future of fintech.

For more details on the Leumi Hackathon, click here.