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I know a lot about disruption. I’ve seen it up close.

In 2008, I was on Wall Street, working at Lehman Brothers, when the global economic meltdown hit. The next thing I knew, I was out on the street, holding a box with all my office possessions in it, looking back at the building and asking a single question: What just happened?

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One of the key lessons that experience taught me was that disruptive change happens really fast, without warning, when and where people least expect it.

When the dust settles, some Canadian banks could find themselves looking a lot less like Amazon and a lot more like Sears

In fact, just this week, it happened again. in late March, Apple introduced the Apple Card into the U.S. market, a new app-driven credit card backed by Goldman Sachs. It has the potential to completely upend what has been a stable and highly profitable product for traditional banks.

Canada, without a doubt, is next. The question is, will our banks be ready for a competitor the size of Apple? A competitor that has more cash on hand than the combined market capitalization of three of Canada’s top-five banks.