When I worked for a bank it was explained to me that early on foreign banks and financial institutions would not take a call from someone other than a VP, so they made all the bankers VP's to get work done. That was probably an over simplification.

Thing is, within the banking industry, these end up being fairly standardized titles. Titles mean less across industries, but within an industry, there's some consistency. In fact in banking, these are more standardized than tech industry titles are.

Typically at banks, the ranks are: analyst, associate, VP, managing director. Everyone eventually gets to VP, so it's not a particularly high level. It's similar to how tech companies have a level everyone is supposed to reach (often "Senior"). So, analyst is an entry-level role, associate is a mid-level role (2yrs experience, or a higher degree), and VP is a terminal role. VP is a wide band, though, so there's often sub-levels within that (whether publicly visible or not): managing director is a very high title at a bank.

I think this is mostly a technical requirement related to signing authority (e.g. for lots of things you need to be an officer).

Of course, the VP being the threshold target role for this is a choice, but it seems to be useful in contexts like banks to have some sort of dividing line.

In banks in engineering it was once explained to me, that dev salaries require a title (in comparison with other staff). Hence ordinary developers are often titled AVP, VP or AD.