Authors
George Ravich, Chris Skinner
Published by
FS Club (August 2020), 12 pages.
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The Covid Crisis: Effects On The Financial Services Industry
A financial services industry survey conducted jointly by FS Club and US-based Ravco Marketing in the summer of 2020, sponsored by Salesforce, found that the industry sees a silver lining resulting from the covid-19 crisis. The survey drew upon 130 global executives in banking, fintech, and consulting, and covered six areas: crisis management preparedness, effects on current operations, working from home, relationships with key constituencies, the future effects, and their current state-of-mind. Most thought that the crisis had a positive effect on their customer and employee relationships, on the market fit for their current products, and the productivity levels of work from home employees. Not all was positive, with the majority saying that their ability to reach the year’s business goals was negatively affected. Among the findings:
- 51% of banking executives think the crisis has had a positive influence on their customer relationships; about half think there will only be a small amount of account switching as a result of the crisis;
- 59% think the crisis has had a positive effect on their employee relationships;
- 83% say they support work from home initiatives, and 76% predict that this will reduce their future need for office space;
- 60% think that the covid-19 crisis has had a positive effect on the market fit of their current products;
- while executives think the crisis has had a negative effect on all parts of their business, with sales and marketing getting hit the hardest, they think that the crisis has had a positive effect on their IT department’s ability to reach their KPIs (key performance indicators);
- 56% think there will be many changes to the financial services industry due to the crisis, with 27% predicting ‘dramatic’ changes;
- 40% of Americans said that they were unprepared to handle the covid-19 government programs that flowed through their organizations, which was almost double the global average and four times the European responses.