There is no denying that the air has changed. The pandemic has taught us that coming back to “what it was” is not the right direction. It has clarified that such hyper-interconnected, complex system that is the world we live in today is widely unpredictable and subtle, even local, events or changes happening at the early stage of a process cause huge, bigger global impacts that cannot be predicted with rationale. In the chaos theory, we call it the Butterfly Effect, and this is what the financial services industry is experiencing right now.

It’s said – states Jeff Goldblum in an iconic scene of Jurassic Park – that a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and there’s rain rather than sun in New York. To be accurate, in physics the butterfly effect is described as “a sensitive dependence on initial conditions”, meaning that, in a chaotic system, variations in the starting conditions strictly corresponds to significant variations in the future, long-term behaviour of a system. And the pandemic offered a real proof of how rapidly the world can change and to what extent businesses must redefine their priorities to keep up.

Entering 2022, the key to face the challenges of a world that is exponentially changing face, patterns, plans, and processes is to stop thinking in terms of new normal, or next normal, but rather thinking in terms of a scenario that is continuously reshaping and therefore will never go back to normal, that we define as “never normal”. The question is what moves to make in times of exponential change, and how to prosper in the never normal?

Technology vs Digital Thinking Dilemma

We all remember that time when the pandemic was perceived as temporary. Two weeks and it’d be gone. For that, all those strategies implemented initially were meant to manage short-term settlements but soon enough the enduring nature of the pandemic has forced companies to take long-term strategic directions, and, against first previsions, Covid-19 gradually became part of our lives.

Looking back in time, the investment service and more generically the wealth management have experienced a disruptive innovation in the last two years. To begin with, a prompt and integral shift to digitisation, so that out of the blue, organisations found themselves in the unusual position to manage product, processes and relationships digitally.

Indeed, because they were not accessible any other way, or place, products, services and relationships became easily and widely available via online tools and platforms. Client relationships, in particular, that have long benefited from a personal interaction with trusted advisors, were exceedingly disturbed by the pandemic and both clients and advisors have learnt to communicate digitally. Likewise, the relationship between financial services companies and their technology partners has transformed.

Hand in hand, pandemic disruption and technology disruption have penetrated the social tissue and altered the way we live, socialise, work and consume. These events have transformed the entire industry and set in motion irreversible mechanisms and behaviours that nowadays we all perform on a daily basis at the greatest of our capacity.

But how did we? And how will we continue to manage and prosper in this scenario? There’s only one answer to this, and it is Digital!

Traditionally speaking, we tend to identify digital with technology, and vice-verse and technology itself, it is generally seen as a means of automation. It is all much more than this. We are looking at technology with unconventional eyes and suggest a more disruptive vision. Let’s be clearer on what digital is for us, and what’s technology instead.

Digital is about innovative thinking processes, bigdata based decisions, the ability to adapt to changing conditions, rapidly and in an agile way; the ability to react in real time. As such, it needs to be embedded in the entire DNA of a company.

Technology is the means to achieve a way bigger goal; a powerful tool that could prevent evolution, if left alone, but is also able to express the overall potential of a company and project it into the future, if backed up by a consolidated digital DNA.

As a result, we reckon that in the never normal future we cannot imagine neither successful people or companies that do not live, operate and create value by a digital-first DNA.

But it doesn’t end here as more changes are already on their way. To prepare for this overly dynamic world, it’s fundamental to always walk in the shoes of our clients and keep an eye on what their expectations and needs are when trying to future-proof. Customers and providers together need to start analysing phenomena widely – thinking on what the long-term effects of current events will be, knowing that the tide can turn, but you are required to navigate just as good and still guarantee the best performance today. That’s the challenge! To future-proof, to have a bit of ante-mortem thinking attitude, rather than a post-mortem thinking.