Celent asked attendees of our live Innovation and Insight presentation on April 16 four questions. We were curious about the effectiveness of work-from-home (WFH); what challenges Covid presented; the technology being used for WFH; and how the pandemic might have changed plans for the cloud and SaaS (Software as a Service).

We were, quite frankly, surprised: our respondents (440 answered the first question, with some drop-off afterwards) portrayed themselves as coping with today’s pandemic challenges and well positioned for the future. Are Celent clients just that much more ahead of the curve than the rest of the financial services industry, or are financial institutions and vendors simply better prepared generally than we thought? Because the attendees skewed towards larger firms for both FIs and providers, we suspect that the poll results show a higher level of preparedness than would be the case if the respondents had included a greater number of smaller companies.