I think you're sort of right. Banks don't think of themselves as tech companies. Their culture, priorities and upper managemet aren't those of a tech company.

But they are now tech businesses. Here's an example: Last year RBS made a mess of deploying some code[1]. It shut down their online and telephone banking services as well as stopping money transfers for a few days. Their ATM and branches were still giving out money but this pretty much shut the bank down because people rely on transfers to get paid and pay their bills. The backlog of transactions took days to work through and the whole thing cost the bank 100s of millions in compensation and damaged reputation.

Their branches remained open, but it didn't matter. What people need banks for now is the storage and processing of electronic money transfers. They are a SaaS business with a branch network bolted on. They just haven't realised it yet.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15606707, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_RBS_computer_system_prob...