A decade ago, there was a rumour circulating among the London financial scene about a bank that was housing a basement server that was quietly calculating the conversions between pre-decimalisation currencies — farthings and shillings — and the more modern decimalisation denominations — today’s 10 pence, 20 pence and so on. The punchline was that the bank was afraid to touch it, worried what would happen if it was turned off. Taking on the characteristics of an urban myth, the name of the bank usually changed with every telling of the story.
Whether the story was accurate is irrelevant. The story felt true to many people who worked in banks and strived to develop and deploy products to compete with the new raft of fintechs. These companies offered products without the need for scary servers hiding somewhere in a basement.
