Sibos 2020: World should have been prepared for the pandemic - Jamie Dimon

The world was not prepared for a global pandemic like Covid-19 but it should have been, according to Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan.

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Sibos 2020: World should have been prepared for the pandemic - Jamie Dimon

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Speaking at the opening keynote of Sibos 2020, he says: "I'm not blaming any administration, but the world was unprepared."

"We prepare for things like pandemics, closedowns and disasters, but not a global pandemic shutdown."

On a more positive note, Dimon states that it was even more shocking how the world reacted, with entire businesses being able to send all their staff home and work remotely.

"The amazing thing is we were able to to do it quickly. Bureaucracy disappears when you have to make decisions quickly," he says.

Dimon also believes that the pandemic has demonstrated the strong position that the US banking industry is in.

April through to August were some of the most active months ever experienced across almost all of JPMorgan's areas of business, according to Dimon.

"Talking about processing money, I think we hit $9 trillion in one day, which is 50% higher than the norm.

"Biggest bond issuances, biggest trading months, bigger investment banking months - flawless!"

With digitisation increasingly occurring across the board in the financial industry anyway, it simply sped the transformation up.

"We would have probably otherwise taken two years to get people signed up for DocuSign - we got it done in two weeks!" Dimon adds.

Despite this, he highlights that a permanent working-from-culture would be detrimental in the long term and the negatives need to be acknowledged.

"You learn more just by hanging out with each other and having a conversation, both with colleagues and clients," he says.

"Think of the younger people: they learn by being on the road with you, doing presentations, solving problems - that's how they learn and you can't do a lot of that remotely."

JPMorgan head of payments, JP Jolly recently spoke to Finextra about post financial crash world of 10 years ago and the lessons than can be drawn for today.

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