Covid-19. A conversation with the Asset Service Provider Industry

Imagine you are a large Asset Service Provider (ASP) CEO, addressing your leadership team on a Monday morning, and telling them we have a week to transform our operation from an almost total office based environment to one where all our people will need to be based at home. Prior to the Covid crisis you would have struggled to do so with a straight face or to retain respect, but in fact this is what the entire ecosystem of the Luxembourg financial sector achieved, with minimal service disruption, affecting around 50,000 people (including banks) servicing over €4trillion of assets, during a period of some of the highest market volatility, and a pandemic sweeping through the country, talk about a “perfect storm”!

PwC Luxembourg today publishes the story of that remarkable achievement, told through the eyes of 20 CEOs and/or COOs of such firms in that very situation in mid March. Their stories reflect incredible professionalism, and admirable dedication of their people, newly discovered leadership talents, a realisation that decisions can be made in a bold, agile and effective manner, that cascading a sense of trust and empowerment through their teams is rewarded by enthusiasm, energy and a “can do” attitude. They also reflect investments by many who had begun the transformation towards more remote working but perhaps never expected to stress test it so soon and with such dependency! A clear consensus emerges around some of the longer term consequences for our industry, and on whether it leaves Luxembourg stronger or weaker.

PwC Luxembourg was honoured to host and facilitate this conversation with the industry and proud to record its highlights in this paper, which we hope will serve as a tribute and testament to all those whose efforts ensured Luxembourg can rightly remain proud of its position as the leading cross-border fund domicile in the world, evidencing its sustainability, resilience, reliability and trusted partner to the world’s leading Asset Managers.

This is not yet another survey, but instead tells the anecdotes, the “war stories”, the experiences, the opinions, the challenges, and what we can learn from the past few weeks and months, from those whose leadership qualities were tested and proven as they steered their way through a crisis without any playbook available.

This paper is the result, which the whole community can take pride in reading, and share in the lessons.

The full report contains much more material and key take-aways and is a riveting read. It offers insights in a number of areas for the Asset Service Provider Industry. You can get the full report here.

Press release