Many will continue to work from home permanently or with much more regularity, meaning a lot of empty office space and lower commercial real estate values. But traffic congestion eases, and the air everyone breathes becomes cleaner. 

“After a month of working from my well-appointed home office, I suspect I won’t be going back” says Florida-based Dan Gimbel of NEPC, an investment consulting firm. “How many other professionals will routinely venture back into their cars, often for long commutes, to expensive offices?”

Home-based work will likely restructure the way companies are managed and how teams are designed and collaborate. We will see a shift from static organizational structures toward dynamic, semiautonomous teams.

“Financial advisors who see improved digital resources will embrace the transparency and access that financial apps and online resources provide,” says Ksenia Yudina, CEO of U-Nest, a mobile app that makes it easy for families to save for college. “Failing to adapt to the preferences and expectations of millennials and future generations will see old school wealth managers slowly lose influence, relevance and clients.”

Calendar-based, appointment-driven client meetings will be less frequent, says Alvina Lo, chief wealth strategist at Wilmington Trust in Wilmington, Del. “That means advisors will have to dig for deeper connection and make them more relevant.” Blanket emails won’t work. Personalized experience is the key. Advisors who updated client plans once a year will revise them more frequently.

 Jeffrey Swett, managing director of The Swett Wealth Management Group at UBS in Boston, is now updating plans off-cycle to make sure they are aligned with quickly changing conditions and values. “We can’t predict, but we can prepare.”

Investors’ risk tolerance will be recalibrated for decades to come, says Robert R. Johnson, finance professor at Creighton University and former president of The American College of Financial Services. “If this coronavirus pandemic is many months in duration, and equity markets continue to exhibit extraordinary volatility, it will serve to dampen young investors’ appetites for risk assets. The standard will likely fall to a 50-50 allocation, even in a very low interest rate environment. This will lead risk-averse investors to fall short in accumulating wealth for retirement.”

The Volcker Rule prevents banks from making speculative investments, like those that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. In the recovery from the pandemic, the Volcker Rule is likely to be relaxed. “The credit markets are the grease for the economy,” one advisor notes. “Unless we want the government to be the go-to backstop in every crisis, the Volcker Rule will have to be revisited so the industry can provide the necessary liquidity.”

The SEC will impose more controls around algorithmic trading to mitigate the perverse impacts they create, many advisors predicted. Financial regulators will consider new rules to govern short selling in times of crisis. Regulators in the U.K., Spain, Italy, France and elsewhere have all imposed various bans on short positions as the pandemic roils global markets. Some advisors predict that the SEC will do the same.

While Edward Jones’ 15,000 branch offices are open, branch teams can choose to work in the mainly two-person offices, maintaining social distancing guidelines. They remain closed to clients and external visitors.  The consensus is that maybe half of the retail branch offices will reopen. 

“Edward Jones will have to rethink their business model,” notes Matthew Schulte, head of financial planning at eMoney Advisor. “There’s a certain segment of population, skewing older, that will want to sit across the table from advisors. But I believe Edward Jones is already rethinking the retail store model to ensure that there’s a mix between those who now prefer digital engagement to face-to-face conversations.”

For the record, Edward Jones says it will reopen all of its physical offices when the pandemic passes and it is safe for clients and advisors to return. 

Editor's Note: This item has been modified to reflect Edward Jones’ office policy.

Workers’ professional and personal lives, once compartmentalized, will blend. Colleagues and clients are getting a glimpse into the home lives of each other, seeing spouses, children, pets and home décor choices. Parenthood can’t be hidden or apologized for. When video meetings are scheduled around the naptime of children, the wall between work life and family life has crumbled. This level of transparency will have long-term implications for employee benefits and the way they are supervised and compensated.

“People will find their workdays following a very different cadence,” says Jeffrey T. Polzer, management professor at Harvard Business School. “Normal work activities will get disrupted and then blended with your personal life. Before this, you may have felt overloaded with too many meetings and relentless emails. The shift to working from home can be an opportunity to reflect on your priorities and design your new schedule to accomplish them.

New rules will allow “in-person” legal transactions—such as signing, witnessing and notarization of documents and comments—by video. New York was early with a new rule allowing a notary to take the acknowledgment of a trust creator over video. In Georgia, witnesses to wills, notaries and signatures are allowed through videoconferencing for the course of the pandemic. These rules will roll out across the states and then be embraced at the national level and become permanent.

Congress quickly passed a stimulus package of $1,200 to every American adult. The problem was disbursing the money quickly. How easy it would be if every American had a national banking account—a free checking account, debit card and payment system backstopped by the Federal Reserve. That would transform the financial system into a public utility akin to the internet, public libraries and insured savings accounts. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio revived the FedAccounts concept in a non-stimulus-related bill. The U.K., Japan and Australia already have some version of the concept. Look for it to find support in the U.S. as the delay in disbursing stimulus funds becomes a political issue.

There will be a rapid transition to cloud-based client management systems that give advisors flexibility and access with control and security, according to Hannes Helenius, head of marketing at Stockholm-based FA Solutions. “Expect to see a massive switch to cloud solutions that allow everyone in the organization—back office, middle, front office, as well as management—to access relevant, up-to-date client data. Collaboration between departments must work smoothly, not just within the four walls of an office, but also to serve remote workers.”

On March 23, the Treasury Department extended the federal income tax filing due date to July 15. Experts predict that in the uncertain days to come, rolling the deadline back to April 15 will impose undue hardship. At some point, such a change would require a nine-month tax year. The government will be occupied with stimulus programs and there will be no political enthusiasm for moving it back. For some years to come April 15 will be extended to July 15, and eventually made permanent.