Technology, an all-purpose word venting unease in the case of ANZ in the face of the fintech uprising, seems to be collapsing into a scattered rather than scientific management method at the bank.Investment analysts puzzled over the treatment of IT costs in the investor pack for the March 2019 half."Scaled technology infrastructure spend, property projects and scaled agile delivery methodology," - strategic but not unusual - wandered away from the "technology" expense label and lumbered into "Investment spend."Most curious, technology spend fell A$69 million at ANZ over the half, helpful in offsetting the $78 million rise in payroll, thanks to APRA, ASIC and the banking royal commission. Even more curious FTEs fell by nearly 1000 to 13,020, so specialised banking skills of many varieties command premium salaries.Then take a look at ANZ's summary of work underway following the Hayne inquiry."Simplification through use of technology," - a slogan - is itemised to include "removing manual processes", then highlights "automated account linkage" as well as "consolidation of home loan origination systems."As today's lead article reports, the mortgage machine is a mess.The analysts didn't like the bank's tech messaging and Elliott did not like explaining things. "We're getting away from the direct investment in technology … we'renot spend on replatforming. We're stepping back, we slowed that down."Analysts and the ANZ board may be looking back over KPMG's report late last month, "Does banking's future outweigh its past?"."One thing is clear. Traditional banks cannot afford to apply patchwork upgrades to their legacy systems," Ian Pollari, Global Fintech Co-Leader and Anton Ruddenklau. Global Fintech Co-Leader, argued in that report."Nor can they assume that system upgrades, even bold and ambitious ones, will translate to a sustainable competitive advantage over the long term. "While the pace of technology change in financial services has been more gradual than in other industries, in part due to regulatory restrictions on new market entrants [to banking] in many jurisdictions, the ability of companies to rapidly adapt will only become more critical over time."The degree of industry change is such that banks need to think more radically about what they want to become and how they want to get there if they expect to thrive."