Commercial banks are moving in the right direction, yet the next 10, 30, Position now to and 60 days are mission critical. Effective leaders will move even faster, with well-considered steps to further adapt the bank in light of COVID- emerge stronger 19, and to emerge stronger when the crisis storm is over. In this paper, we offer guidance on how commercial banks that act now might make it (continued) happen across four key operational areas: A first and immediate issue, of course, is the workforce. Commercial 1 2 banks are acting wisely to deploy people and scale their workforce as effectively and safely as possible. Some banks in Asia have called upon Enable clients to Help businesses retired bankers and operational staff to help service the dramatic increases in demand.4 maintain operations access financial support A large bank in Australia has undertaken rapid workforce planning to understand where skills can be repositioned. It has also halted projects that aren’t immediately contributing to the response, again releasing key 3 4 people to front-line or operational teams. Almost overnight, traditional business banking relationship management models have been Digitize commercial Proactively monitor redesigned to slow the contagion as some commercial banking clients banking offerings and portfolios to shield still rely heavily on the human touch and paper-based processes while struggling to stay ahead of customer expectations, new regulation, and automate processes credit quality the infection. We suggest what banks might do now to proactively meet business And now many banks may be seeing returns thanks to their earlier customers’ immediate needs and what they should consider doing next investments in digital offerings that require little-to-no people power and to build the more valued, trusted relationships with their clients that can are safe to use in isolation. A large bank in China drew on that advantage lead to differentiation and longer-term growth. to quickly launch a “do it from home” campaign, educating its customers on the availability and benefits of using digital channels to engage with the bank. 4 Copyright © 2020 Accenture. All rights reserved.