The coronavirus pandemic has undoubtedly altered the financial services technological landscape, but which changes will be permanent after the pandemic ends?

This is the question bank and fintech panelists tackled during the Bank Innovation Build virtual conference yesterday, and the predictions spanned commercial and retail banking, the role of banks in facilitating financial health, and the possible lasting shift to remote work.

New customer preferences and expectations

“The day-to-day, rote, basic transactions and behaviors, — they’re just not coming back. They’ve moved to other channels,” said Stephen Welling, executive vice president and director of retail banking at the $18.9 billion Cadence Bank. Customers who previously said they wouldn’t use mobile check deposit, for instance, have now been pushed to adopt such digital channels “and they love it now, so it’s one of those things where they need the catalyst to move them forward,” Welling said.

As Cadence adapts to changing customer preferences, it will quadruple its number of video tellers to boost the digital customer experience.

For City National Bank’s head of innovation, Craig Schleicher, the change with the greatest staying power is the new customer expectation that has been set through digital transformation.

“The bar has been raised on experiences across the board,” Schleicher said. “We have to remember that banking is not the only industry that has made significant investments in digital transformation the last six months, so our clients benchmark us against the experiences they have in every industry, and that bar continues to go higher and higher.”

As the $70.3 billion City National aims to meet — and push — the benchmark, the bank rolled out a new mobile app this summer with an upgraded user interface, additional tools for money management and the ability to easily switch between consumer and business accounts.

Reinforcing bank roles

Ben Soccorsy, head of digital payments for Wells Fargo Virtual Channels, predicted that “banks’ roles in helping customers manage their data in a complex set of interactions they have with multiple apps and other things is something that this pandemic has transformed that’s not going back.” The industry needs to accelerate its response to the changing dynamics of data sharing, he noted, “because our customers are changing quickly.”

Wells Fargo integrates customer feedback into its digital roadmap, and Soccorsy said in July that customer feedback pushed the $1.97 trillion bank to add digital wallet capabilities to Control Tower, a solution that shows customers which third parties are accessing their data and allows customers to switch data-sharing agreements on and off.

After the pandemic and recession subsides, consumers will think differently about what financial health means, and will look to banks to facilitate their financial health, according to Kelly Switt, senior director of financial services strategy at Red Hat, which provides storage and operating software platforms to financial institutions. As such, the industry will likely reassert time and energy on wealth management space, for emerging wealth and high net wealth, as soon as 2021, she said.

Doubling down on digital

Remote work is also here to stay after shelter-in-place measures are relaxed, predicted Moin Moinuddin, vice president of engineering at BBVA-owned Simple, a mobile-only bank that focuses on personal finance management.

“Especially in technology, I don’t think we’re going to go back to 100% office, at least for a while, but I also think it has interesting impact because people are moving to parts of the country that are not known for high tech and high salary,” Moinuddin said.

Indeed, recent data has shown that demand for software developers in the U.S. is highest in New Jersey, South Dakota and Mississippi, while Utah in recent years has attracted fintechs and banks to set up offices. “I wonder what, economically, that changes in those areas — what kind of growth and economic impact it will create,” Moinuddin said.

Another permanent shift in digital banking processes will touch the commercial side of the business, spurred by the Paycheck Protection Program, said Nathan Snell, chief innovation officer at cloud banking provider nCino.

“There’s definitely a shift in expectation, and the beginning of an evolution of what commercial banking looks like,” Snell said, noting that, prior to the pandemic, submitting an online application for a commercial loan would be unheard of, but recent events, like the PPP, pushed the industry standard.