Fund managers divide into two clear camps on banking with almost nobody in the middle. On one side are those brave souls who bought Lloyds shares as the UK government sold, on the basis that the sector will gradually sort itself out. On the other, there are those who eight years on from the financial crisis would still not touch them with a barge pole.

The optimists say that history favours the brave. Every recession, let alone crisis, sees banking shares laid waste and then revived by the subsequent recovery. The question is only one of time. If banks are properly run – avoiding the excesses of boom and bust – their shares can be seen as a proxy for economic growth.

The unfortunate problem is that it is difficult to distinguish properly-run banks from those that are permanently crippled. Robert Jenkins, a founder member of the Financial Stability Committee and one of the best-connected Americans in London, marvels at how current bank boards “shoot themselves in the foot, reload and then take aim at another part of their anatomy.” His concern, expressed in the Financial Times, is that “in attempting to preserve those parts of the organisation which are socially useless but personally lucrative” they are throwing overboard the parts that are socially useful and, on a proper risk-adjusted basis, should be comfortably profitable. There is, nonetheless, potential to change their ways.

The cynics are united in having none of the optimists’ argument, but their scepticism takes two distinct forms. One subgroup believes that leopards cannot change their spots. The other does not care if they can because they think it is only a matter of time – and not a particularly long time – before technology does for them.

Antony Jenkins (unrelated), who was chief executive of Barclays for three years until being ousted in 2015, neatly highlighted the problem at a recent New City Agenda conference. Changing a bank’s embedded culture to make it customer-focussed was the work of years if not decades – and banks do not have the luxury of time.

He says that while banks struggle to adapt fintech companies will eat ever bigger slices of their lunch. They are already biting at invoice discounting, money transfers and foreign exchange as well as mortgages and bridging finance. Inevitably, they will continue to cherry pick the profitable parts and much of what remains could easily become zombie activities absorbing lots of resources for little return. In search of a profitable core, this could force them into repeated rounds of cost cutting and shrinkage – not a happy dynamic for shareholder returns.

Robert Jenkins therefore has a problem with management and the decisions it takes. Antony Jenkins believes that even if management takes the right decisions banks face a huge if not impossible struggle to adapt. History will not repeat itself; this time really is different.