Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer (@GregPalmer47) recently caught up with Jim Marous, co-publisher of The Financial Brand, and owner and CEO of the Digital Banking Report.
The two discussed Marous’ latest research on the changing face of work in banking and financial services in the age of COVID-19. Here are a few excerpts from their conversation.
On the future of work-from-home (WFM) and working remotely in financial services
What we would found was that a lot of jobs worked almost as well if not as well from a work-at-home or work remotely environment as they did at the business place. One of the biggest examples were call centers. A lot of call centers, when they went remote, found out there wasn’t really a dramatic negative impact. In fact, from a quality of life basis, there actually was a better impact from the standpoint of employee happiness, awareness, and the ability to actually get the job done.
On the ability of new video and audio technologies to transform the way bankers work with small businesses
Let’s say you’re a small business banker. You can do a better collaborative call by not being in-person. (Instead) bring in three or four other specialists from the small business world into a (video) call to serve the client. An innovation example from Deniz Bank in Turkey was that for their agricultural division they found that their business bankers spent a lot of time traveling from farm to farm. But when they did it centrally (with video conferencing), they were able to bring in meteorologists, fertilizer people, equipment people, people that dealt with crop rotations and different elements that brought value to the farmer …
On overcoming the skills gap that can accompany rapid adoption of new technologies
Organizations and governments are going to be required … to help up-skill employees to be ready for the future. The challenge is going to be that employees and companies can’t wait for this to happen. Organizations right now need to find the people to fill those skill areas. Amazon, I believe, has committed to training 100,000 of (its) employees in moving to the digital world in their organization. They’re going to train their own employees because they realize it’s going to be easier to train them than it is to find them in the outside marketplace. But that’s not going to be enough. Employers and organizations are really going to have to encourage people to do this training on their own.
Check out the rest of the conversation. Join Jim and Greg on Episode 55 of the Finovate Podcast.