Financial Institutions and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives since late 2019. In the past years, we experienced lockdown, social distancing, flattening the curve, and other strategies that were designed to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. However, those strategies also incurred an economic slowdown to the world economy. In this project, we assess the influence and shocks received by the financial institutions, such as the traditional banking sector, the market intermediaries, capital management, and others. On the one hand, the social distancing and all the disinfecting and safety procedures may cause fewer customers and rising costs. On the other hand, we also notice a strong-growing stock market performance in the past years, bringing rising revenues to the investors and financial institutions. Thus, it calls for a detailed analysis of the gain and loss of financial institutions during the pandemic. This project provides a great opportunity to investigate how financial institutions adapt and respond to a world crisis.