The corona pandemic is a crisis of healthcare – but some bankers are finding ways to mobilizing their expertise, networks, and other resources to help in the fight of the novel virus.
Peter Hancock is a Wall Street veteran: the British banker oversaw finance and risk at J.P. Morgan before taking the top job at U.S. insurer AIG. He's been an independent consulting since leaving the U.S. insurer three years ago – and just launched Sniff Out Covid.
The data project marshalls technology and medical brainpower to identify patients afflicted with anosmia or the lack of sense of taste and smell. Anosmia is believed to be a leading indicator for the virus – and Hancock and the researchers want to «go viral against the virus» by identifying as many people as they can in order to map potential COVID-19 disease clusters yet to emerge.
Roger Studer macht's vor
Hancock's efforts are emblematic of how finance is trying to fight the virus itself – enlisting as foot soldiers in the economic fallout aside. In Switzerland, ex-Vontobel top investment banker Roger Studer (pictured below) is launching a hackathon for programmers to build an app to help fight the virus.
A Swiss government-sponsored hackathon, Versus Virus, is more broadly promising: the two-day digital marathon beginning on Friday has won support from wealth manager UBS, cooperative insurer Mobiliar, Berner Kantonalbank, and online broker Swissquote.
The government-backstopped loan scheme aside, financial services firms have been prominent sponsors and patrons locally. A cantonal bank donated 5,000 face masks to its local hospitals, while UBS bossSergio Ermotti donated 1 million Swiss francs ($1 million) for victims in his native Ticino, which is a stone's throw from Italy's hardest-hit regions.
