Top 10 op risks 2021: organisational change

Change the sole constant as industry ponders its post-Covid future

When HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, announced late last month that it planned to reduce office space by 40%, it encapsulated what the long months since the start of the coronavirus crisis have driven home to many banks: plenty of the changes to operating environments wrought by Covid will be permanent. 

In an era when many customers have learned to live without being able to visit their lender’s branches, many are openly contemplating a future in which the idea of a bank looks very different –