by József Nyíri,VP of Business Development
That’s right. We’ve been in the coronavirus pandemic for so long that people have actually started giving it nicknames. If you’ve been wondering why users on social media keep referring to being in a “panoramic”, “pandemonium” or “panera bread”, you’re welcome. Also, here’s a handy collection from The New York Times for your coping pleasure. Sidenote: “pandemi moore” is the absolute best and you can’t convince me otherwise.
On a more serious note, I thought it would be a good idea to take a step back and reflect on the disruption the past twelve months have brought to the banking industry and the path forward.
Last March, the Dow and the FTSE suffered their worst day since the Black Monday crash of October 1987. With restaurants, hotels, pubs, retailers and transport services shut, US unemployment rates were soaring to Great Depression-era levels. With the IMF predicting that the economic fallout from the pandemic would probably do the global economy more harm than the 2008 Great Recession, the question on everyone’s mind was: “Where do we go from here?”
“Digital”, in short, turned out to be the answer. According to a briefing by McKinsey, the COVID-19 crisis sped up the digitisation of companies’ customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by three-four years – in just three months. The share of their digital offerings? By seven years.
