Aside from the safety of a 'vault', and large budgets to build centralized services, banks have little to offer the individual consumer. They are clearly looking to #blockchain and #fintech for ways to make themselves relevant to consumers today as a way of staying relevant, and hoping they can buy up any disruptors.
The unfortunate consequence of massive advertising and regulation (needed to protect them from failing) is that the typical consumer (exposed since early childhood) will automatically favour a Bank when it comes to security. The "Zero Liability" message for payments and online banking fraud was absolutely necessary to convince people to move away from face-to-face in-branch transactions, toward they much more cost effective (and in fairness to banks, also convenient) Automated Teller Machines and Online Banking portals. However, any cursory glance at official fraud statistics (likely under reported) will show that a certain amount is acceptable in the business model. In an age of continuous system compromise (highlighted by reporters like Brian Krebs), banks are faced with a difficult dilemma about shifting liability back to consumers. They already widely hold Commercial Online Banking customers liable for fraudulent take-over of accounts (also providing them with much more secure authentication).
It's a moral hazard to price in fraud for bank fees, however, failing to reimburse customers would rapidly reduce the comparative advantage over non traditional, and decentralised alternatives like crypto-currency. The security 'feeling' anyone has from depositing money is valuable. And of-course banks know and promote this.
For all the talk of the 'killer-app' that would make the likes of Bitcoin appeal to the masses, I haven't heard very much about making it feel as secure for the unsophisticated user as they feel from traditional Industrial Age banks.
Security is a technical problem, and once solved can start the battle for hearts and minds that will bring blockchain disruption towards critical mass. The one-to-many opaque gatekeeper days will only end when we achieve the level of security that is (somewhat naively) perceived today with banks. Perhaps a private key derived from our own biometrics would work - of course anything digital can be easily copied, so an authentication mechanism would also need to prove a person is actually signing the transaction. Security is an art as much as a science, and surely warrants further discussion.
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