admin The Covid pandemic has impacted the different sectors of the industry in a myriad number of ways. The digitization journeys of firms have been altered profusely as a direct consequence of the pandemic. The lessons learnt from the bygone year have been indispensable to say the least. According to Takis Georgakopoulos, the Global Head of Wholesale Payments at J.P Morgan, treasurers will be incorporating this wisdom into their endeavors in the upcoming months of the new year. The company plans to aid treasurers on this bold journey by its own digitization roadmap.
Creating a Digital Fortress
Digitization has become not simply a choice, but a reckoning at this peculiar historical juncture. Georgakopoulos said that while the trend of corporate treasurers seeking ways to enhance the global visibility of bank accounts and payment flows was clearly there well before the pandemic, what changed was a sense of urgency from clients to move to a digital environment with a renewed focus on guiding their organizations through the volatility.
The key takeaway for J.P Morgan was that they have been able to further cognize the indispensable role played by financial institutions in supporting their clients’ modernization goals. The first step in this direction is for banks to embrace their own digitization roadmaps.
Modernizing Payments
During the initial months of the crisis, J.P. Morgan’s key focuses were migrating about 80 percent of its workforce to safely work from home, continuing to process about $7 trillion in transactions every day without disruption and collaborating with corporate clients on their business model transformation initiatives. Digitization strategies that were set forth well before the pandemic quickly proved instrumental in achieving those goals. The heavy investments made by the firm in the domain of virtual assistance technology, digital signatures, and a full suite of payment APIs have finally paid off with their rapid adoption by clients as the pandemic gripped the world.
Thus, for J.P Morgan, payment modernization is the key to success. It is focusing on the e-commerce and healthcare customer base, along with its efforts to grow small business payment services and innovation. This would include its proprietary JPM Coin and its newly branded blockchain unit, Onyx by J.P. Morgan. As J.P. Morgan makes strides in its own digital transformation journey, collaboration with FinTechs will be valuable in developing products and services to better address treasurers’ shifting needs, too.
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