Return to work: What will trading floor look like?

There has been a tremendous amount of change in the way in which we work in the last 18 months.  The financial services industry is no different. There is now a sense of hope that life could soon return to normal. Financial services organizations could achieve by creation of distributed hub-and-spoke offices. In addition to this, installing the appropriate infrastructure for employees to work remotely on a long-term basis also is on the list.

In order for this to come to fruition, the financial services community must overcome the obstacles of guaranteeing resilience, reliability and security. Despite restrictions lifting in several countries, and companies, the outlook is not necessarily supported by the entire industry, with the financial services industry not observing a mass return to the workplace since the restrictions on working in the office were lifted.

Nevertheless, finding a balance between flexibility, reliability, scalability and security is far from easy. It is important for firms to consider if there should be a split between working from the office and working remotely. Financial institutions should think about individual employee preferences when it comes to working remotely on a permanent basis. The industry over a decade, has observed paradigm shifts in how technology services are provided, as well as in technology itself. The benefits of this are felt by companies of all sizes, ensuring all firms, whether they be large or small, incumbents or newcomers. For trading firms, being able to trade anytime, anywhere, from any device in a compliant manner is a tremendous competitive advantage in an environment. The company want a system that provides them with a feature of futureproofing, allowing them to adapt and maintain their advantage over competitors. In a post-pandemic world, only thing that is certain is change. Irrespective of whether companies decide to go back to pre-pandemic ways of working or not, the reality is that nearly every industry has learned a lot of important lessons based on the events of this lockdown. By utilizing the right technologies, adopting a cloud-native environment, and leveraging the subscription model, financial services companies can ensure they are prepared to embrace the new working world that emerges in the wake of the pandemic, in whatever form it takes.