Purchase any WEBINAR and get
10% Off
Validity : 24th Mar'24 to 03rd Apr'24
Firms from the financial sector, and especially banks, have for long been criticised for their role in society. All the more so in times of crisis, as we had to witness in 2007-08. The response has included a barrage of communication, increase capital requirements, and other hardly relevant measures. However, society still needs a more equitable sharing of resources, and appropriate global responses to crises, as opposed to some country-based politically-driven disparate responses that 2020 gave us to witness.
During the pandemic, central banks around the world have sent prompt signals together with drastic and immediate action. It may be the right time to ask again the old questions about what banks should do to contribute to an effective response to the crisis.
Channelling government aids also includes providing the necessary credit without going into the traditional pitfalls of credit, such as over-lending, under-lending, lending to the wrong sectors of the economy.
Banks have a role to play in stabilising financial markets, which have been through the roughest days in their histories. In markets more than anywhere else, self-interest could coincide with societal interest.
In the hardest times within the pandemic episode, the challenges have been operational ones, too. In this aspect too, the stress-test plans of banks could be put to good use and profit to every part of society, with or without any altruistic views.
Banks have a specific role to play in the present crisis like in other global crises, and a few marks not to overstep. The right policies, re-improvised for the time, can help financial returns as well as a return to better popularity.
Beyond the old and quasi-religious philosophical debate about banks and money in society, it is now a good time for banks to play their full role, and no more, to contribute in mankind’s exit from the pandemic. The opportunity is quite good for recovering the loss of reputation that occurred in the last global crisis, in 2007.
Whilst 2007 was mostly due to the banking sector, 2020 can be the reverse. However, the pitfalls are many, including wasting money, taking up the role of charities, or unduly interfering in other areas such as strategies for recovery, sharing of resources and slipping climate change agendas into the post-pandemic world