Covid-19: A Change in Priority, Not in Strategy

Insight

minute read

The current COVID – 19 pandemic is a human crisis of immense proportions that has never been seen before. Every day as we look at what’s going on around us, we can see how governments, people and businesses are reacting to the challenges posed by the pandemic and the lockdown.

Enterprise Blueprints see three major factors impacting banks – each factor may evolve differently based on various COVID – 19 recovery scenarios.

  • Reduced Interest Rates: With interest rate by Bank of England to be cut to the lowest level ever to boost the economy. Bank can expect reduction in Net Interest Margin
  • Credit loss impact: Too early to predict, and highly dependent on recovery scenarios. Still, early metrics on deferred mortgage (bill) payments and loss of income for both consumer and small business segments are a cause for concern
  • Increase in Operating Expenses: Significant increase in customer handling calls and a need for 24/7 service with no disruption can increase Operating Cost significantly for banks

We see reducing operating expenses (see point #3 above) as a high  priority for banks to address immediately and support their customers and businesses ever-increasing demand in these challenging times for:

  • Processing huge number of  loans to businesses through government-backed scheme (like CBILS – Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme)
  • Rapidly adjusting to the huge spike for mortgage payment holiday requests
  • Operating virtually and providing 24/7 service with no disruption
  • Informing and Reassuring customers of new and upcoming changes and its impact on them

It is worth noting that the COVID – 19 current crisis has exposed the low level of digital preparedness of banks and an immediate call to action for Extreme Digitization, whilst that seems to be a long term strategy in the short immediate term ‘Cognitive Solutions (Cognitive Automation + Virtual Assistants)’ can offer banks much needed rescue

In response to this we have created a series of services to best support you at this time, Cognitive Banking Assistant Services for COVID – 19 which will enable you to:

  • Select an industry-proven Cognitive Solutions option that fits your challenge
  • Accelerate your implementation of Cognitive Solutions
  • Monitor and Adjust based on new changes in this very dynamic environment.
  • Support in aligning the changes with ongoing long-term digitisation roadmap

Backed by our years of banking domain knowledge and deep strategy architecture expertise we are here to support you in your COVID-19 response.

Contact [email protected] if you would like to know more.