Goldman Sachs: we need to talk about Marcus
Years ago, IBM built an artificial intelligence system called Watson. This starred in nifty TV commercials beating human geniuses at chess and in quizzes. It is unclear whether Watson ever produced much hard cash as opposed to soft power for the computing giant.
The precedent is ominous for Goldman Sachs, the most famous securities firm in the history of Wall Street. It has its own mononymic offshoot. This is a nascent online consumer banking service called Marcus.
On Tuesday, the ambitious parent confirmed in quarterly earnings that Marcus is not getting the grades it was hoping for. Marcus has helped attract more than $100bn in deposits, stabilising Goldman’s funding base. But spending billions of dollars to attract retail customers is no longer sensible.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Tax Cognition
