Banking secrecy, high-street branches, well-paid Swiss banking jobs: all these were on the brink of extinction before corona. But now, there may be a surprise comeback to watch out for – a finews.com essay.
1. The Second Life of Bank Branches
The almost blanket closure of bank branches across Switzerland during the lockdown wasn't great news for some of the high-street representations. Zuercher Kantonalbank for instance announced recently that six of 33 temporarily closed branches in the region would remain shut. Similar developments are to be expected to occur at other banks. The trend toward digital banking is not leaving much room for doubt about the future of expensive branches.
But another trend has emerged more strongly with the pandemic. Working from home. And this may in fact become something of a saviour for the common bank branch.
Why is that? The experience with work from home has been more or less positive, surveys have shown. From the point of view of employees – nine out of ten staff at telecom giant Swisscom supported the homeoffice, according to information obtained by finews.com. Homeoffice was quite common before the crisis among Swisscom staff; saving time on travel and a better compatibility with family life was often cited. The top managment of the state-owned enterprise are now considering the implications for the firm.
(Picture: Shutterstock)
The same will certainly come true for bank bosses. Because they could save significantly by introducing homeoffice. UBS already announced that it will cut down on the number of offices in future.
This is rather bad news for the companies that let the expensive headquarters in the city centers. But not necessarily for the network of branches. In other industries, the management has taken to employ the branch network to house local staff instead of forcing them to travel across the country to work from headquarters. In times of social distancing and the need to avoid cramped public transport, this makes sense in more than one way. In the medium, it could ease congestion, save rent and improve the visibility versus the clint. And, last but not least, employees would be happier.
UBS had such regional pools of offices even before the crisis. They were closed down during the lockdown. It will be interesting to see whether there's life still in the branch network.
2. Outsourcing: of Another Era
- Page 1 of 3
- Next >>
