Plans were not perfect, and of course there are lessons to be learned, but overall people and technology responded well to support customers. Banks managed to reassign staff from back office to front office, across geographies, and transition from manual to digital channels very successfully.
Staff had to adapt to working from home with kids’ television programmes in the background, while also balancing increasing work demands with home-schooling! New Zealand banks entered the crisis having built up strong capital and liquidity buffers in the prior decade (Figure B).