The price of gold is a trustworthy barometer of investor anxiety. When it’s high, a crisis has likely prompted investors to seek it as a safe haven. COVID-19 was that crisis in 2020, driving gold’s price to new heights, but throughout 2021, it has fallen as conditions have improved. Will the Omicron variant send gold prices soaring again?
The pandemic has ignited banks’ digital transformations and stressed People as our key priority. Leading from the heart, closing the digital-skills gap, translating corporate purpose into action, undertaking a transformation that is strategically anchored and risk-balanced and maximizing customer experience, will propel banks into a better shared future.
2020 wasn’t a good year for shareholders scheduled to receive bank dividends. Regulators swiftly put a halt to dividend payments from banks to ward off a pandemic-induced crisis, requiring lenders to conserve capital and distribute it as needed to consumers and businesses. The dividend pipeline is slowly reopening as confidence grows in the banks’ stability, but it may be a while before shareholders receive their fair shares of the profits.
Australia, famous for its coral reefs and koala bears, is also home to some of the world’s most brazen banks. The Royal Commission that spent months investigating the actions of the nation’s top banks uncovered a hornet’s nest of misconduct and customer exploitation. Needless to say, remedial steps are in effect, and the banks involved have been left with little choice but to take swift corrective measures.
If it feels as if artificial intelligence is taking over, there’s a reason for it. It is. The democratization of AI has begun, and the technology is set to change the world as we once knew it. Banks won’t be left out of the transformation. While bank senior executives cheer the cost-saving and efficiency-boosting potential of AI, bank employees may fear for their jobs. But that’s where reskilling steps in