As President Joe Biden previews new plans to increase Wall Street oversight, banks and financial institutions have another issue to contend with: how to carry their more flexible WFH policies into an era of more regulation. Many banks—like many corporate tenants more generally—have adopted a wait-and-see approach to office space strategies, and they've declined to state whether remote work will be their norm once the pandemic wanes.  And others, like JPMorgan, have taken a stronger, more definitive position on returning to the office—though even if it does, the firm will still likely scale back its real estate footprint, as it undertakes plans to consolidate its Manhattan operations at a new Park Avenue skyscraper and seeks sublettors for 800,000 square feet of space in New York City, according to a report in Bloomberg. 

The wait-and-see game is particularly tough for banks. "The challenges around compliance and security are important factors when it comes to banks' decisions on where their people can work," said Giles Wrench, Corporate Solutions at JLL, in a new post on this subject. "This is an industry that is used to having their people in a controlled environment, and for which regulation is a greater factor than for almost any other office intensive user. The reality is there's a lot of indecision and waiting to see before deciding who can work remotely long term."

JLL notes that cybersecurity attacks are on the rise as the pandemic wears on, with financial employees at particular risk given the nature of transactional and confidential information they routinely exchange. Employees working remotely are more vulnerable to phishing attacks and other tech breaches as well, and banks' firewalls are often incompatible with the majority of online sharing platforms.