Lessons Learned from a Global Pandemic

COVID19 Impacts & Priorities

With the initial onset of the pandemic in Spring 2020, things began to shift rapidly. It impacted every type of business, leaving companies and organizations to produce creative solutions. Our panelists discussed some of the top challenges they faced in those early days, as well as what they needed to prioritize:

• Employee health and wellbeing: Focusing on physical health (i.e., reducing exposure to COVID19) as well as mental health (i.e., impacts of isolation) were top priorities. Sam Ahmed’s company, DBS Bank instituted creative solutions like a “no meetings on Friday afternoon” rule to help bolster employee wellbeing.
• Remote team dynamics: Sam Kim pointed out the challenge of hiring and onboarding while everyone was working remotely. It required significant effort and creativity to keep teams connected and engaged while working apart from each other. Rohit Verma echoed these thoughts, remarking that he would typically spend 70% of his time traveling to connect with clients and colleagues—switching to remote work was a big shift.
• Innovation: Due to rapid changes in policy, regulation, and social dynamics, the pandemic required creativity and innovation. So much that Chunyen Liu remarked the “I” in CIO no longer stands for investments—it’s innovation!
• Continuity planning: With so many unknowns, companies needed to be proactive. Dr. Frederick Shen Chong discussed his company’s focus on continuity planning, where they focused on things like technology improvements to ensure they would be able to keep operations going.

Within this list, we see both challenges and opportunities. And that’s exactly what the pandemic brought—new ways of thinking and doing business.

Market Volatility

A key impact of the pandemic in the early days was “stomach-churning volatility” as Sam Kim called it. It was so significant that companies were pivoting very quickly to find solutions and strategies to cope with it. Sam Ahmed discussed how his company started having open dialogue with their clients and became more flexible than they had been in the past. In the face of volatile assets and liquidity rapidly drying up, they could not afford to be as “black and white” as they were previously.

For Chunyen Liu, volatility meant opportunity. She works for AIA, an insurance company that holds long-term investments. Because of this, volatility is a good entry point for long-term assets, and they were able to maximize the opportunity by purchasing investments to benefit their long-term goals.

Market volatility had other impacts, too:

• Some saw an unprecedented volume of trades, like Rohit Verma’s team, who had to re-assess their risk systems to ensure they could manage it.
•  “Easy money,” as Dr. Fred Chong called it, from the government due to low interest rates flooded the market making banks, insurance companies, and markets flush with cash.
• Along with market volatility came personnel and situational volatility. Sam Kim said his traders were used to market volatility and were prepared for it—they were less prepared for what would happen if the whole team was out sick or in quarantine. It created a new challenge on top of the market volatility.

Like all aspects of the pandemic, market volatility required new strategies, priorities, and innovation to ensure operations could keep moving forward.

Regulations, Innovation & Opportunity

The finance, banking, and insurance industry is driven and governed by regulations. There were some changes during the COVID19 pandemic that impacted the industry. Rohit Verma discussed how the UMR was pushed by one year, which initially gave everyone some breathing room.

For Chunyen Liu, shifting regulations from the RPC required renewed dialogue about their hedging programs, whether it be interest hedging, equity hedging, or credit hedging. It was important to understand the dynamics and weight the pros and cons—what might work in one region, won’t in another due to different regulatory requirements. Chunyen also discussed involving regulators in the early conversations before executing new programs or policies.

Despite regulations, companies found many opportunities and ways to adapt during COVID19. Here are some exciting innovation and opportunities that arose:

• Cryptocurrency products have become important assets.
• Carbon trading is an ongoing conversation, with many banks and insurance companies looking for new green initiatives
• Technology solutions like new trading platforms or apps have been accelerated to help fill the market gaps.

Dr. Fred Chong summed up the opportunities from COVID19 like this, “…Not just the products, but the crisis has also given us the opportunity to take a step back and say, ‘what within the bank needs to be re-engineered?’” COVID19 prompted innovation in technology, digital assets, and new products. But beyond that, it prompted innovation in simple day-to-day interactions that had to change because of how the pandemic impacted the way we live and work.

Conclusion

We can say it on repeat, but it remains true: the pandemic changed everything. New work arrangements, changing regulations, and market volatility created significant challenges in the finance, banking, and insurance industries.

But along with the challenges and difficulties, there were opportunities. Our panelists discussed the way they were able to adapt and the innovation of new strategies, programs, and products that were created. This creativity and resiliency of the industry is exciting to see and will continue to strengthen the industry and provide exciting opportunities in the future.