In this issue

The world carries on

Normality is seeping into our daily lives. Shops are reopening, you can now have a meal in a restaurant with your family, and neighbours are twitching their curtains less if you go out for a walk.

This is from the perspective of the UK and my heart goes out to the many countries still coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. If it helps at all, the UK has probably hugged too many friends at a wine bar and will be struck by some variant in the weeks to come. This will bring another lockdown and another rewatch of all the DVD boxsets on the living room shelf.

Not everything is as it was. A large number of people have one more vaccine in them than they used to. Scores of workers are looking for a hybrid model, not in their automobiles, but in their Monday to Friday lives.

In this issue, we look at how artificial intelligence has developed over the Covid-19 pandemic. Is this a grand development or a Trojan horse?

US inflation is also examined, and Royal Bank of Canada gives its view on sustainability and the power to be green.

While we look at the “new normal”, a phrase that lost what little meaning it had very quickly, we can see how much has actually changed. Interaction with wealth managers has changed forever, people are looking to make investments themselves, crypto is taking off at a speed nearly as drastic as the velocity in which it will crash. Maybe we’re not going back to normal after all, but to something completely different.

Whatever it may be, PBI will be here to cover it.

Patrick Brusnahan, editor