When researching for this article, I came across a piece by Sarah Butcher in efinancial careers . The title of this article published on the 10th of February 2020 read: Banks have a month to prepare before the virus starts behaving like an Epidemic. Wow!!! That was well spotted! Nine months later, sitting in my chair and being (once again!) on lockdown, I cannot help but think how I personally misanticipated, well, pretty much everything...

For this article, Sarah Butcher had interviewed bankers who were preparing for the upcoming crisis. There were talks about regretting not to have stockpiled on Tamiflu (months later, we know how useful this would have been). Also, banks seemed to be no more prepared than in 2007, when 45% of US banks had a Pandemic Contingency plan, “asking employees to work from home, requesting leniency from regulators, and potentially pursuing a coordinated reduction in trading hours.”

Despite the banks relative unpreparedness, the system has not collapsed

In some cases, they may even have become closer to their customers, building relationships that will last. But during this covid-19 crisis, not all financial institutions have been resilient. There have been situations where employees were asked to stay at home, resulting in the mail piling up and not being dealt with, in this still very much paper-based industry. In some cases, a saturated VPN made it virtually impossible to close loans. Relying on previously proven solutions (such as Tamiflu) to solve new problems is only human. Risk managers are also asked to have a plan ready for each possible scenario (a Pandemic for example). But the one thing this Covid crisis has taught us, it is that we should not waste our companies’ resources trying to be ready for every possible scenario. But being agile enough to be ready for almost anything is key. This goes for organizations, and it certainly goes for software as well.

So here is your "Financing in Crazy times" checklist

✅ You have implemented seamless digital and phygital journeys. Well done! Now, can your employees securely connect to your core lending from anywhere?

✅ Let’s say they can access your system from anywhere. OK... But can (customers, partners, employees) access the same data at the same time, only with different access rights? Because otherwise, it only means more stress and misunderstandings...

✅ Let’s imagine that for any reason, part or most of your staff is not available for a while? You do have a truly helpful and complete self-service? Right?

✅ Last but not least, no-one, at any time, needs to sign anything in person?

If you have answered yes to those questions, it’s a good start. Being agile is a way of interacting as well as a state of mind. Maybe the only way to be and remain agile is to:

• Constantly concentrate on what you do best, what is at the core of your business and leave the rest to trusted partners
• Even when everything is going great, strive to remove complexity from all the tasks performed by employees and customers journeys

[1. Banks have a month to prepare before this virus starts starts behaving like an epidemic, efinancialcareers, 2020](https://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/3003164/banks-preparedness-pandemic)