Sea Change in Financial Services

What is the road ahead for financial services? According to Henry McVey, Managing Director and Head of Global Macro and Asset Allocation at KKR, heightened regulation, de-leveraging, and low rates are all challenging traditional financial intermediaries to ponder what will be the key drivers of growth and returns in this new and unfamiliar environment. An industry once thought of as an agent of change for global growth is now expected to produce, at best, “boring beta,” says McVey.

In an exclusive interview with Privcap’s David Snow, McVey describes the key findings of his latest Insights report, titled “Financial Services: The Road Ahead,” the overriding point of which is that financial services are going through secular, not cyclical, change. In the interview, McVey discusses the ramifications of Wall Street being “forced to de-lever,” the long-term challenges to the credit markets, how the European crisis will continue to affect financial services businesses in the US and Asia, who will step into the securitization-market void, and why he is bullish about financial players that serve the housing market.