BOSTON – May 6, 2021 – A new survey conducted by OpenExchange, the premier video solutions company for financial communications, finds that a majority of respondents from the world’s top financial institutions expect 75 percent of investor conferences to be completely virtual in the second half of 2021, with hybrid events set to become the dominant format starting next year.

The data, which reflect 139 responses from decisionmakers at 30 financial institutions, including seven of the 10 largest global research banks and three stock exchanges, revealed that respondents expect virtual and hybrid investor conferences to remain a major part of the investor communications landscape in 2023 and beyond.

Nearly one third of respondents expect to hold their first hybrid investor conference by October, with two-thirds likely to do so by year-end, according to the survey. Looking forward to 2022, nearly 70 percent of investor events are projected to be either hybrid or virtual, with only 27 percent expected to be conducted purely in person. In 2023 and beyond, 58 percent of such events are still expected to support remote attendance.

Key considerations for returning to in-person events, according to the survey, include safety of attendees and stakeholders, as well as navigating varying social distancing mandates and travel limitations as governments continue to implement policies to address the Covid-19 pandemic.

“While the conference landscape remains uncertain, major banks tell us that the hybrid format – where organizers open events to both virtual and in person attendees – will become the new normal for the foreseeable future as we emerge from the impacts of the pandemic,” said Mark Loehr, CEO of OpenExchange. “Flexibility will be key as we transition into hybrid events as they emerge as the dominant platform into 2022 and beyond. The OE platform and services provide for a seamless and highly personalized conference experience for both attendees and presenters, regardless of the event format.”

To download the summary of the research results, please go to: https://www.openexc.com/survey-virtual.

The release of the survey findings follows OpenExchange’s recent launch of OE VIZION, a next-generation platform for virtual and hybrid events. As companies are still conducting events virtually, OE VIZION combines two applications – OE Passport and OE Central – to allow for unprecedented levels of organization and personalization for conference participants and organizers.

Throughout March and April, ten different financial services firms, including the New York Stock Exchange, have deployed OE Passport for their investor events.

OpenExchange continues to experience record growth. In the first quarter of this year, the company partnered with 35 of the world’s largest financial institutions and stock exchanges to facilitate 143 virtual conferences and more than 41,000 virtual meetings – an increase of more than 800 percent when compared to the same quarter last year.

About OpenExchange

Based in Boston, New York, London, and Hong Kong, OpenExchange video-enables the vital daily communications of the financial services and professional investment industry and its clients with advanced one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many video technologies, tools and services. Anchored by its experience in connecting more than 100,000 video endpoints in the professional investment community and more than 500,000 registered users to its Knovio video platform, the OpenExchange Network bridges the worlds of real-time videoconferencing, video live-streaming, and searchable on-demand video archives and showcases, making it easy to connect, create, disseminate, and discover information critical to investment and business decisions.