Brexit seen as the ‘single biggest challenge’ for financial services in 2020

10 Dec 2019

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New research from Nuxeo says that six in 10 financial workers in the UK are worried about the impacts of Brexit.

Content services firm Nuxeo today (10 December) published results of a new survey, claiming that six in 10 UK financial services workers believe that Brexit will be the “single biggest challenge” to come over the next year.

The research, carried out by Censuswide, asked more than 500 people working in the banking and finance sector for their inputs.

Brexit was viewed by the study’s respondents to be one of the industry’s most pressing challenges, with workers worried that the planned departure from the EU will leave their organisations vulnerable to losing clients.

Impacts already happening

Other challenges identified in the survey included cybersecurity threats and information or data breaches, physical branches closing down, the burden of increasing regulation, competition from Big Tech firms potentially moving into financial services and competition from new challenger banks.

Chief product and marketing officer at Nuxeo, Chris McLaughlin, said: “In 2020, UK financial services firms will not only have to deal with competitive and operational pressures, but they expect that the regulatory and political landscape will impact them as well.

“The firms that will succeed in this challenging environment will be those that focus on improving the customer experience, delivering innovative new products and services, and embracing technologies that will modernise their operations in order to make all of this possible.”

And though Brexit may not have happened yet, the survey’s respondents said that the key challenges predicted for 2020 are already impacting their daily work. More than two-thirds cited Brexit as the most impactful, with cybersecurity threats and increased regulation following closely behind.

Brexit communication

Given the anxieties held by financial services staff around things to come in 2020, Nuxeo said that “banks and other financial services firms need to address this with their staff”.

Increased regulations and the challenges posed by them have been communicated well to almost three-quarters of workers, according to the survey, while 69pc said the same about cybersecurity threats.

However, less than half of those surveyed feel their employer has successfully communicated specific Brexit plans (41pc), the threat from Big Tech (37pc) and the threat of challenger finance brands (36pc).

Lisa Ardill was careers editor at Silicon Republic until June 2021

editorial@siliconrepublic.com