WASHINGTON — Keynotes by Sir Richard Branson, the $4 billionVirgin serial entrepreneur, and global strategist Jonathan SalemBaskin. Panel after panel on mobile banking, peer-to peer-paymentsand the rules of engagement with social media. A tentative obituaryfor near field communication, an innovative payments technologyaround which enthusiasm seems to be crumbling. 

The plain message at the mid-October BAI Retail Deliveryconference was that  a new day is dawning in financialservices, it's no longer your grandfather's spread business and newtools bring new opportunities to those who figure out how to usethem.

Probably no one talk so plainly hit the perils and theopportunities in today's financial services as did Branson's opening day keynote. At first glance an odd choice.He's an innovator in music, aviation and telephony, but what doeshe know about financial services? A lot, it turned out becauseBranson now has over $1 billion of skin in the game with hispurchase of the assets of Northern Rock, a failed English bank thathad been taken over by the U.K. government in 2008.

Branson bought out those assets early in 2012, and his intent isplain. He plans to overturn the cozy and profitable leadership ofthe major British banks.

Branson believes the opportunity to overturn the established bigbanks is both historic and immense. “They have been badly damaged,”said Branson. And although he did not elaborate the implication wasthat the major banks have been tarnished by the present economicdistress, significantly worse in the U.K. than the U.S., and alsoby repeated reports of the huge pay packets handed out to City ofLondon financiers at a time when the institutions were nearcollapse.

Branson, who has made his billions by targeting industries wherehe can play a romantic David battling an evil, stodgy Goliath, nowthinks that the public is ready to move a sizable chunk of theirmoney into new banks, such as Branson's Virgin Money network. “It'sa lot more fun being David,” Branson quipped.

Will he bring Virgin Money to the U.S.? At BAI he admitted hehad a team of executives scouting for U.S. opportunities. Hesuggested he would come to the U.S. eventually. But he also said hehad nothing definite to report at the moment.

His ultimate message was that the time is here to go on theattack against the entrenched banks because their vulnerability ishuge.

And what might work for Sir Richard in the U.K., just might workfor smaller institutions in the U.S. That was a take-away optimismexpressed by at least some executives at BAI.

Branson may have turned on a packed house, but probably thebiggest and longest buzz at this year's BAI, the sessions thatplayed to full houses, was anything mobile and at least one bigidea seemed to start to take hold. The current crop of mobilebanking apps just aren't good enough anymore, not in a worldpopulated with glitzy smartphone games and slick personal financialmanagement tools. The antidote: mobile banking apps 2.0.

Apps developer mFoundry, a Larkspur, Calif.-based company with 800 mobilebanking customers, announced at BAI that it was opening its app toinclude content from a range of third- party developers. mFoundryCEO Drew Sievers pointed to payments innovator Dwolla and prepaidcard specialist Blackhawk Network as cases in point. Sieversclaimed that not only will the more powerful app that results bemore engaging for consumers, it will also produce new revenuestreams for the financial institutions that hop aboard. Heenvisioned a three-way split of profits resulting from sale byBlackhawk Network on a prepaid card, with Blackhawk, mFoundry andthe financial institution all sharing in the proceeds.

Similar splits would occur for other revenue generating toolsput into the mobile banking app. “We will be the gatekeeper,” saidSievers, but he insisted there would be cuts for financialinstitutions that opted in.

Intuit joined in that open app party, also announcing at BAIthat it was opening its apps to third- party content, eitherdeveloped by financial institutions or others. There was lessconcrete detail in Intuit's announcement, but it pointed to thesame direction, giving financial institutions more freedom toarchitect apps that will truly engage mobile members.

At another panel, Matthew Wilcox, a senior vice president atZions Bancorp., a Salt Lake City-based institution, tossed out astaggering figure that validates why mobile is gaining so muchpopularity with bankers. It costs on average $4 per in-branchteller visit versus 8 cents per mobile banking transaction.

Wilcox added that mobile banking customers are more profitable($450 in annual profits per head at Zions versus $350 per onlinebanking only customers). And they are far more loyal. In a year,only 1,5% will leave the institution compared to 4% of onlinebanking customers. Add it up, said Wilcox, and not only is mobilethe lowest-cost channel in banking history, it is producing goodcustomers.

Near field communication, the short-range payments technology,meantime seemed to elicit growing skepticism about its future amongBAI panelists. Multiple panelists cited Apple's decision to keepNFC off iPhone 5. Others cited retail giant Walmart's recentproclamation that it did not see NFC in its future. Bart Narter, asenior vice president at research company Celent, said, “I don'tsee a clear path to NFC adoption in the U.S. The telcos won't playunless they are compensated.” And, so far, no one seems eager tosplit off a slice of a shrinking payments pie to compensatethem.

Narter allowed that maybe NFC would figure in as a technology todeliver well targeted offers, “but you don't need NFC for paymentsto do offers.”

Another unsettled, and perhaps unsettling, idea put out byseveral panelists is that email marketing is on the rise. But emailconsumption is on the decline,  according to DominicVenturo, chief innovation officer at Minneapolis-based US Bank.Another panelist indicated that by his institution's count fewerthan 2% of the emails his institution sent out were read. So thehunt is on for more effective contact points with today's busy, onthe go mobile consumers. That might include text messages onphones, custom pop ups during online banking sessions, possiblytargeted offers during mobile banking sessions. This researchremains in its early days, but the sense that something betterneeds to be put into the hands of marketers seemed strong at thisedition of BAI.

More fire erupted at a panel on person-to-person payments thatbrought together John Feldman, general manager of clearXchange, thepayments vehicle created by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America andWells Fargo; Sanjeev Dheer, the lead executive at Fiserv'sCashEdge; and Arkady Fridman, a 14-year employee at PayPal. Thefight was clear. Would there be a bank-centric P2P solution? Orwould it, to quote Fridman, be consumer-centric? This brawl is inits early rounds but know that  there probably will not bea more spirited fight in financial services over the next fewyears. And a fight it will be because there is no reason to declarean early winner in what will be a hard fought battle for consumermindshare and loyalty.

Important as the technology component was at this year's BAIRetail Delivery, there were strong reminders that finance,ultimately, is a human activity. General session speaker JonathanSalem Baskin, a popular talking head on global marketing, hit exactlythat note when he posited that as financial institutions scurry toget their customers more engaged with them on Facebook and Twitter,maybe they are in fact going about this exactly the wrong way.“What if you flipped the telescope around and asked, how can we getmore engaged with our customers?”

Baskin's suggestion is that when enterprises do that, goodthings happen, for their customers but also for the institutions.His core message, one with considerable resonance in credit unioncircles,- is that prosperity comes to those institutions that dowell by their customers and their communities. “Customers are moreengaged with the brands that are engaged with them,” he said. Flipthe telescope, and just maybe that is the way to see the path totomorrow's successful business model.