There is a lot of money "wasted" on intermediaries due to the closed nature of the global financial system e.g. 3-5% fees for updating a row in a database.
Besides those it allows other novel products that traditionally required trusted entities:
- p2p lending
- reputation systems
- p2p insurance
Also we have things like Open Banking i.e. sending money instantly for free which banks started implementing in 2015, one year after Ethereum mainnet went live which suddenly allowed people to send fiat money instantly and (almost) free. Banks and fintech companies having competition is a good thing for consumers.