Jose Vinals, chairman of Standard Chartered, speaks to members of the media following a news conference in Hong Kong, China, on Tuesday, July 31, 2018. Anthony Kwan | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Embrace tech — that's the only way to survive. That was the message delivered Friday by top finance executives, taking stock of their increasingly competitive industry. And that's not just pressure from the old guard: Technological advances and innovative non-bank "fintech" companies are forcing financial institutions to adapt to increasing customer demands for lower costs and faster service. "We live in a world where customers want convenience, want low cost, want fast service, want solutions," Jose Vinals, group chairman of Standard Chartered, said during a panel discussion at a meeting in Tokyo of the Institute of International Finance.

"We are in the world war for the client," Vinals said. And, he added, not all banks will make the cut. "And remember: If you think of the future of mankind, it is not the survival of the strongest, it is the survival of the fittest," he said, becoming the latest banker to use evolutionary terms to describe the dilemma they face. Nobuyuki Hirano, chairman of Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, said banks that ignore technological advances do so at their own peril. "Digitization is not optional," Hirano said at the same panel.

'Shock to our society'

For big banks, important benefits for adopting technology include the improvements in efficiency and productivity, Hirano said, noting, however, that they may come at a cost. He recalled the reaction when he announced a five-year plan to achieve a reduction equivalent to about 10,000 jobs — or 25% of his firm's workforce in Japan. "That gave a kind of shock to our society," Hirano said. "But that is the reality ... against the backdrop of a very tough market environment."