It was a completely different world the last time Euromoney met with John Laurens, global head of transaction banking at DBS.
Back in September 2019, thousands of people had gathered at London’s ExCel Centre for Sibos: four days of transaction banking speeches, panel discussions and seminars.
Today, the convention centre has been transformed into an emergency 4,000-bed hospital for Covid-19 patients as infection rates in the UK continue to grow.
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John Laurens |
“The human and social impact the virus is having on the world puts everything we discuss today in perspective,” says Laurens over the phone from his family home in Jersey, where he has been since the middle of March.
“But amid all of this tragedy and destruction, there are some good things going on,” he says.
Laurens says that individuals and communities aim to create some semblance of normality where there is none and prop up services that may have otherwise fallen by the wayside. Banks have an essential role to play in this collective effort.