As part of Citrix’s recent research on Financial Institutions of the Future, we surveyed 45 C-level representatives from around the world. As head of financial services for Citrix in the UK and Ireland, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges our customers have faced and how they see the future.
The pandemic has had a unique impact on the financial services industry, and we wanted to know how financial institutions responded to COVID-19 and how the experience changed their perception to security, digital transformation, and how they work overall.
The research reinforced our thinking in many ways, especially around remote working and how that has changed the industry, which has traditionally had people working in offices. Suddenly, though, the pandemic proved there were no boundaries to where you can work.
Our research found that the cultural and social impact of the pandemic and the importance of employee well-being was also a priority. There was a notable shift in organisations focusing on the impact on talent planning and acquisition and how they drive a collaborative culture.
To follow on this research, we held a panel discussion with senior representatives from Fidelity International, National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Crown Agents Bank Limited, and Sella. It was a fantastic discussion, and a few areas stood out.
- Cybersecurity – Panelists felt that it’s a growing risk area and that it could be the next “business pandemic” in banking.
- Cloud adoption – The pandemic forced the industry to accelerate cloud adoption and proved it can be done in line with regulations. It also accelerated thinking and motivation to continue the digital transformation.
- Regulatory conduct – Ensuring that whatever they do moving forward is robust, secure, and meets regulations. As they move to a hybrid work model, a mixture of working between the office at home, or a true remote, flexible working model, firms need to ensure they have security and resilience in place.
- Collaboration and well-being – Redefining remote collaboration and ensuring consistency across the industry, and the impact remote working has on employees.
- Sustainability – Sustainability is high on companies’ agendas. Moving to the cloud enables a more efficient datacentre strategy and end-user compute device strategy.
From a technology perspective, the financial services companies were well prepared for the pandemic, enabling them to invoke their business continuity plans with little disruption. What held them back? A reticence to allow remote working and corporate cultures that didn’t supported it. In some cases, the pandemic completely changed firms’ ways of working and accelerated their digital transformation plans. Some financial institutions were already far advanced in their cloud adoption strategy with Citrix. Whilst in the past, this hadn’t included home working, they were easily able to switch on the capability and move their people home quickly, safely and securely.
Many already had the capability to support remote and flexible working, but there is now a realisation that it can be done securely, in compliance with regulations, and for high-power users such as traders. And if companies want, it can be permanent.
Unlike other sectors, financial services had a low number of people allowed to work from home before the pandemic. Although they had the technology in place to enable it, there were barriers (real and perceived) including culture, regulation, and security.
Once the pandemic hit and work-from-home orders were mandated, financial services coped well and quickly pivoted. Cloud adoption had been comparatively slow because financial services companies are highly regulated, but they’ve accelerated that adoption and gained scale and agility. Financial institutions that embraced cloud have seen a significant competitive advantage, and I see this continuing.
The next test for the financial sector will be their ability to take lessons learned and capitalise on the acceleration of digital transformation, all whilst coming under scrutiny from regulators to ensure they remain secure, compliant and resilient. This is on top of establishing a new company culture which embraces remote working and support employee-wellbeing challenges that might arise.
There are other industries that are also highly regulated, but what makes the finance sector different is the criticality to the economic stability of the country. Financial institutions were simultaneously dealing with a complete change in working culture; being a conduit for government economic stimulus packages; and providing packages designed to help customers during periods of furlough or hardship such as mortgage payment windows. Despite the challenges, financial institutions’ successes in moving to remote work should be celebrated!
The Future
So, what does the future look like?
Citrix will continue to empower financial institutions with technology that delivers a great employee experience and enables employees to work wherever they want security and remotely so they can provide high levels of service no matter the circumstances.
We will continue to help financial institutions with security and deliver protection around the user, the endpoint, and the perimeter. Cyberattacks happen daily, and the weakest part of that security perimeter is often the person and their device and actions.
As employees get used to remote working, it’s important to keep them engaged to maintain productivity and effectiveness. Citrix can deliver value to financial institutions as they move out of crisis recovery mode and into planning for the future.
Learn more in our Financial Institutions of the Future kit, which contains our full research paper and a link to our on-demand panel discussion.
