Five years after the COVID-19 lockdowns sparked a widespread shift to remote work, the secured finance industry is still exploring what “normal” looks like. In this in-depth article, leaders from across the sector share candid insights on productivity, culture, hiring, training, and communication in a post-pandemic world. From hybrid skeptics to fully remote advocates, their stories reveal the complexity—and opportunity—of evolving workplace models.

March 13, 2025 marked five years from when we all initially started working from home with the COVID-19 lockdowns. The secured finance industry, just like other industries, continues to grapple with determining the best practices and preferred “new normal” around remote work. And there does not yet appear to be a consensus. It is not a right or wrong decision – it needs to fi t with the roles, experience level, geographic proximity, and preferences of individual teams. This sectional analysis reviews the varying opinions of leaders in the secured finance industry, who open up about their own experiences and determinations. The article discusses longitudinal research and various work-from-home (WFH) culture, productivity, inherent advantages and disadvantages, the ongoing “WFH Fridays” debate, learning and development, hiring, training, and communication. The leaders quoted in this article are from a mix of large and small companies that run the gamut on their 2025 WFH policies and preferences.

Culture: Cultivating Connection in a Distributed Realm
As was the case with most companies, Haversine Funding at first tried to work fully remotely, but it became clear to its co-CEO Gen Merritt-Parikh fairly quickly that for its small team of people in growth mode, “…[w]orking in the same space - at least most of the time - worked better for us.” Merritt-Parikh expanded on that conclusion, “being in person helped learning and ideas move faster, decisions come quicker, and culture stick.” This comports with Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) research highlighting the difficulties of maintaining a strong remote culture, citing impaired camaraderie and shared identity.

For deliberately fully remote companies, like Edge Capital, an asset-based lender with a workforce of 24 people located across 14 states, fortuitous water cooler run-ins must be replaced with intentional culture-building activities and strategies. To nurture culture, Edge employs tactics like a team book club to create a shared language, universally views decisions through the lens of the company’s “core values,” and employs a “no-jerks” policy. Edge also established cultural norms, such as mandatory video calls and a shared understanding that impromptu video calls are a replacement for physical door knocking. Kendall Covington, a senior collateral analyst for Edge, agreed. “Having clear communication [norms] and well-defined goals allows a team to operate just as fluidly as an in-office environment. The ability to connect with other colleagues in another state by a simple phone call allows for a more collaborative and engaging atmosphere.” From her experience working from home for Edge for the last five years, Covington concluded, “I strongly believe that it is possible to have a true culture, learn, and grow as a professional within a remote environment as long as there is a solid structure that is built on communication and trust.” Also, creating purposeful remote meetings can lead to greater focus. In an office, hours a week are often wasted chatting. With remote work, meetings are time boxed and have set purposes. Gallup research also supports that strong communication and a sense of purpose are vital for building remote team culture.

Article author, Edge’s CEO and president, Meredith Carter, has found that for remote meetings to be successful, all team members attending the meeting must be remote simultaneously, “when some team members are in the office, but others are not, it doesn’t work,” she noted. “People need to have a regular flow to their days and minimize context switching to stay focused and organized,” she opined. This sentiment was echoed in a 2023 Harvard Business Review article suggesting that hybrid models can breed “in-group” and “out-group” dynamics, potentially fracturing team cohesion.

In slight contrast, Angela Fiorentino, counsel to Gulf Coast Bank’s factoring and lending subsidiaries, believes that a hybrid model works best for culture building. She believes that meeting in person is what is ideal, but understands that should be on balance with employee satisfaction, well-being, and work-life balance. When her team is in the office together, they “aim to make face-to-face interactions as productive and enjoyable as possible by organizing team-building events. Previous activities have included a cornhole tournament, succulent planting session, and a visit from local rescue puppies. These initiatives not only promote camaraderie among team members, but also improve collaboration and communication during our in-person meetings.”

Similarly, Access Capital has evolved from becoming fully remote at the start of the pandemic to a hybrid model. Access Capital’s chief credit officer, John Belling, shared how they determined that conclusion, “both through internal surveys and objective deliverable requirements [we have determined], that the vast majority of our tri-state area employees are happier, work longer hours, and are more productive when working from home than in the office.” He continued, “aside from in-person onboarding, training, and coaching, we also have multiple in-person, week-long, team and culture-building sessions annually, at which we see greater focus, participation, and collaboration because the team is not together on a daily basis, so the events take on a special feel.”

Productivity: Autonomy and Output in Remote Settings
Remote work’s impact on productivity has been widely debated. 

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