ANZ is taking an observant but seemingly jaded approach to the fashion for a deep interest in the capacity of the "fintech" sector to "disrupt" banking.Patrick Maes, chief technology officer and general manager of group technology, services and operations at the bank walked through facets of the topic in a talk at the AB+F Randstad Leaders Lecture in Melbourne yesterday.US-based Lending Club - a bit of a poster child for fintech - "have not disrupted banks," he said."They still use banks, they have the wrong name. They should call themselves 'Syndication Club'," he said."But they serve the community in a magnificent way. They built a business on top of a bank; it's about innovation, it's about being clever."Maes said: "I have not seen that much product innovation. The products we sell today were sold two thousand years ago."It's not about disruption or defensive education, it's about digital mastery and vision."Maes also scorned "big data"." I call it the McDonald's version of analytical; a second type of spam," he said. "We don't want to sell more products, we want to sell services."Of two product lines dependent on the application of the "block chain" ledger principle - Bitcoin (a crypto currency) and Ripple (an international payments substitute) - Maes said: "you need a large number of collaborators and use it in a settlement environment."But he was not all jeremiah, concluding "I hope there will be disrupters, we will be healthy and keep us fit and alive."Maes said ANZ was "in intense collaborations with ecosystem partners, first the universities [and then] the strategic vendors like IBM who have huge research labs."Continuing to spurn what is becoming conventional thinking, Maes said: "I'm not fussed about equity [stakes in fintech firms]. You can only invest in so much and only get a certain perspective."Instead, Maes said, ANZ favoured the work sponsored in its own innovation labs in Wellington, Melbourne and Singapore."Tests on our platform, that's what these start-ups are excited about."Finally, in Hegelian regalia, Maes projected that "in five years time we will talk about neural disruption. Artificial intelligence will really take off, unlike in the '80s."The neural disruption will allow us to automate more processes. In banks there a lot of jobs that can be automated."Then society can get release from monotonous tasks. For the first time in history mankind will have freedom."