Remote workforce – new rules
In January 2021, international law firm Bird & Bird surveyed 400 senior decision makers in businesses based in London and the South East of England to learn more about how the UK’s capital has dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic and to gain an insight into how the city is looking to move towards a new normal.
London’s financial sector appears to be one of the most affected by the changing landscape of agile working, with almost 90% of respondents from financial services companies stating that they need a better understanding of employment law when applied to remote working.
In terms of the medium and large businesses in the capital, 46% said that increased working from home has had a negative impact on business performance, with half of all those surveyed also saying that the lack of face-to-face interactions had negatively impacted board performance. Despite this, 75% plan to renegotiate rental agreements, with over 95% saying this is a result of the pandemic.
Additionally, the uptick in remote working has also revealed another consideration for London’s businesses: cybersecurity. 60% of respondents to the survey noted the increased level of risk to their IT infrastructure, with 46% of businesses reporting an increased number of cyberattacks on their IT systems in the last 12 months. Looking ahead, 88% of businesses who have experienced these cyber-attacks expect this to continue into 2022.
Christian Bartsch, partner and co-head of the financial services sector group at Bird & Bird comments on the future outlook for the financial services industry: “There is an opportunity for the UK financial services industry generally to leverage its expertise in digital finance. At Bird & Bird, we are used to working at the intersection of where technology meets financial services regulation, so working with clients to deal with disruption in the sector and looking at new markets is a core part of our business.
“If those operating in the sector get a good balance between the right tech, used efficiently and with a keen eye on the regulatory environment in which that tech is deployed – those are the entities that are going to be well positioned to take advantage of opportunities in the years ahead.”
Trystan Tether, partner in the financial services sector group at Bird & Bird notes that the pandemic has coincided with the finalisation of Brexit and discusses the possible implementation of that for changes in financial services regulation: “There are a small number of areas where equivalence is possible under existing legislation. But it doesn’t cover the vast majority of financial services and is never going to be anything like passporting. Those people who want to do business in Europe have mostly created their own subsidiaries.
“In terms of whether we use our new-found ability to revise the existing regulatory framework, there does not seem to be a desire to rework the whole canvas. Although this may change over time, at the moment it is more about getting a somewhat finer brush out and adjusting parts of the picture – streamlining things, making them clearer and making adaptations to provisions which were always less well suited to the London market. By contrast, where new regulation is needed going forward (e.g. for crypto assets or in relation to digital operational resilience), it will be interesting to see how far the UK adopts a parallel or significantly divergent approach to that of the EU.”
