When most people think of evolution they imagine it to be a slow, gradual process. But recent research suggests that evolution can occur over a matter of decades. In geological terms, that’s an eye blink.

In the financial ecosystem, as in the animal kingdom, businesses have to evolve fast when the environment changes. And rarely has the environment changed more, or evolution needed to be so fast, as now. In most segments of the financial industry you can see evidence of what biologists call gene flow - where previously separate populations start interbreeding.