Covid19 & financial regulation: The return to the office

As we contemplate working practices post-lockdown, FCA-regulated firms (indeed, any business) may be wondering not just whether it is possible to "return" to the office, but rather whether it is desirable to return to the ways we worked before lockdown. 

Put another way, it may not be a given that, like other businesses, many FCA-regulated firms will definitely be returning to the ways and locations they worked before lockdown. But I think it is reasonable to anticipate that firms are planning to return to the office to some extent as we exit lockdown.

This raises the question of how to best make that transition. And for FCA-regulated firms, this question is heightened by the supervision and expectations of the regulator.

Whilst we saw a degree of accommodation from all stakeholders toward firms as they grappled to make the changes needed to work remotely when lockdown started, we are now looking at a scenario where firms returning to work will not have such a comfort blanket to protect them. So, it is not a case of merely reversing the shift to remote working, but rather it is going to need to be a slower, controlled, well thought out and smoothly implemented orderly transition.

FCA-regulated firms will need to ensure that operations, functionality, connectivity and communications continue to work even as they look to return some personnel and functions to the office. 

And the biggest challenge to FCA-regulated firms in this phase is not in the outcome, but how they achieve that outcome. 

To illustrate (using a very simplified and imperfect example) what I mean, consider the difference between paddling a kayak over rapids and paddling along a calm stretch of water. In the white water rapids scenario (which in this case represents the shift to remote working in lockdown), the only care of those paddling, on the shore and elsewhere is that the kayak passes the rapids without capsizing and no loss of life or limb. It need not be pretty, because the outcome is the only concern. In the calm water scenario (which represents the return, in whatever form, to the office) the same stakeholders take a safe outcome as a given. Instead they will be more concerned about the process. There will be more attention paid to the smoothness of the journey, the effectiveness of the paddling, how much the boat wobbles.