Exclusive research finds a silver lining for banking and FinTech in coronavirus crisis

During the summer we performed some extensive research, released today. Details below:

Download the Survey Report and View the Video News Release

The survey is available at no charge and can be downloaded by providing a few basic details about yourself.

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View the video news release as well.

Bank and FinTech Execs Report Strengthening Customer and Employee Relationships Due to COVID-19

Survey finds most predict big changes to the industry and that work from home is here to stay.

London, UK and Wilton, CT, USA, August 11th, 2020: Amid the global pandemic, a financial services industry survey conducted jointly by the UK-based Financial Services Club and US-based Ravco Marketing, sponsored by Salesforce, has found that the industry sees a silver lining resulting from COVID-19. Most think the crisis has had a positive influence 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 is positive, though, with the majority saying that their ability to reach this year’s business goals have been negatively affected.

Also surprising was how the American respondents report being much less prepared to implement government programs than those in the rest of the world. According to the survey, 40% of Americans said that they were unprepared to handle COVID-19 related government programs that flowed through their organizations, which was almost double the global average and four times the European responses.

The global survey conducted during the summer 2020 focused on executives in banking, FinTech and consulting, and covered six key areas: crisis management preparedness, effects on current operations, working from home, relationships with key constituencies, the future effects, and their current state-of-mind.

Among the key findings include:

• Of the banking executives in the financial industry surveyed, 51% 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.
• Overall, 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.
• Among the Fintech executives surveyed, 60% think that COVID-19 has had a positive effect on the market fit of their current products.
• Overall, the 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).
• As for the long-term impact, 56% of respondents think there will be many changes to the financial services industry due to the crisis, with 27% predicting “dramatic” changes.

According to Chris Skinner, the well-known industry commentator and Chairman of the Financial Services Club: “While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on society and business, we were surprised to find that the banking industry believes that their performance during the crisis has had a positive influence on their customer and employee relationships. The industry has talked about digital transformation for over a decade and many are now realizing the need to accelerate their investment to become a truly digital bank and better able to compete with the growing number of challenger banks that are well positioned for a post-pandemic world.”

According to George Ravich, President of Ravco Marketing and co-author of the study: “While the industry believes that they were well-prepared for COVID-19, most interesting to me was how the Americans felt so much less prepared to deal with the COVID-10  government programs that flowed through their organizations than those in Europe and other parts of the world.”

About the Survey

An invitation to participate in the survey was made widely available to industry participants through social media posts during May and June 2020. A total of 130 people completed the 13-question survey administered online through SurveyMonkey. The sample clustered around a few characteristics which can be summarized as follows:

• Almost all (94%) of the respondents are people employed in either FinTech, financial services, or consulting.
• Most (56%) live in Europe/UK, 15% live in the US, and 12% live in Asia.
• The largest group (41%) are employed by small companies with less than 100 employees, followed by those (25%) employed by large companies with over 5,000 employees.
• Almost half (48%) describe their organizational role as either executive management or line of business (LOB) management. About one-quarter are in product management or innovation.