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Workplace Strategy & Design for Financial Services Companies

Balancing Regulation,
Retention, and
Reputation.

Formcraft helps financial services organizations create environments that meet operational, cultural, and compliance needs through strategy-first, design-build delivery.

From investment firms to banks and global finance platforms, our integrated model unites strategy, design, and construction under one roof. That means faster decisions, clearer outcomes, and spaces that reflect the way financial institutions actually operate today.

Speak to a Financial Services Workspace Specialist

Understanding the
Financial Workplace Today

Understanding the
Financial Workplace Today

Few sectors have experienced more workplace tension than finance. As hybrid policies evolve and regulatory demands remain fixed, financial institutions are facing tough questions about space, investment, and experience.

Some companies are scaling down their footprint. Others are reconfiguring to prioritize in-person collaboration and client visibility. What unites them all is the growing need for a workplace strategy that reflects function, policy, and cultural expectations with minimal disruption.

If this sounds familiar, you aren’t alone. According to CBRE’s 2024 Global Occupier Sentiment Survey, 63% of financial institutions expect to reconfigure their space within the next two years, with a focus on experience, agility, and regulation.

Financial Services
Priorities

01
Secure, client-ready
environments

02
Hybrid and
meeting-first workflows

03
Meeting regulatory
requirements

A Strategy-First Approach

Strategy That Aligns
Leadership, Culture,
and Compliance

Formcraft’s workplace strategy process is designed for institutions managing layered approvals, policy dissonance, and multi-site oversight. Our team helps define direction early before space becomes a point of friction. We work closely with leadership teams to:

• Navigate tensions between hybrid work and seat ownership
• Map department-specific space needs and shared support constraints
• Align senior stakeholders across risk, operations, and real estate
• Model options across size, budget, and policy scenarios

Whether your goal is reducing SF, enhancing in-person experience, or improving regulatory zoning, our approach adapts to your structure without compromising on speed or accuracy.

Let’s Talk Strategy

Key Challenges We Help
Solve in Financial Services

In finance, decisions must be fast, but defensible. We help clients mitigate risk, minimize misalignment, and deliver projects that satisfy both internal governance and external perception.

Through integrated strategy, design, and build, we reduce the need for handoffs, giving you one accountable partner from planning to delivery. Common challenges we address include:

  • Long lead times for decisions, materials, or permitting
  • Complex approval cycles driven by global or regional policy
  • Inconsistencies between offices, brands, or lines of business
  • High internal burden on lean workplace or real estate teams
  • Disconnect between A&D and construction causing rework or delays

Formcraft’s integrated design-build model brings strategy, design, and construction under one roof. This reduces friction, increases speed, and improves consistency across multiple sites. It also minimizes the burden on your internal team.

Learn More About Our Methodology

25% faster

Project completion over our conventional peers

4 x greater

Estimating accuracy

50% less

Project management burden on your team

Workspace Planning
in a Hybrid-First,
High-Regulation Sector

Workspace Planning
in a Hybrid-First,
High-Regulation Sector

Financial workplaces vary widely, but most require a careful balance between flexibility, control, and perception. Some institutions adopt compact, agile seating. Others maintain generous workstations and enclosed offices. All must plan for collaboration and client interaction. We help institutions:

• Understand the impact of attendance policies on workspace sizing
• Address noise, privacy, and confidentiality expectations
• Define space needs across departments with different regulatory constraints
• Support both hybrid and always-on teams (e.g., trading floors, audit groups)
• Preserve brand equity while enabling change

Explore our project portfolio to see how we’ve brought design priorities to life for leading financial services organizations across the US.

View Projects

Meeting and Support Spaces
That Reflect Professional Standards

As client expectations evolve and videoconferencing becomes a standard tool, financial workplaces must now support interaction in more ways than one. We help clients:

• Increase availability of small, VC-enabled meeting rooms
• Zone spaces to separate quiet areas from active collaboration
• Improve sound management for open areas and shared huddles
• Design guest-ready zones that reflect brand quality and compliance
• Provide high-quality amenities in smaller footprints

Across the sector, tolerance for noise has dropped and expectations around focus have risen. Book a Leadership Workshop now to begin planning for both.

Book a Leadership Workshop

Navigating Policy Dissonance,
Privacy, and Change Resistance

Financial institutions often experience strong internal disagreement about what the workplace should be. Leadership may push for in-person culture. Teams may resist mandatory presence. And compliance may restrict shared space models entirely. Formcraft’s workplace strategy process helps navigate these dynamics by:

• Facilitating workshops that reveal misalignments early
• Mapping regulatory separation needs (e.g., copy rooms, café zoning)
• Defining what success looks like for each stakeholder group
• Modeling cost, culture, and performance impacts side by side

We help you avoid redesigns by identifying functional misalignments early - and solving them at the source.

Financial Services Inputs

Why Life Sciences Companies Choose Formcraft

“Your work is helping us to live out our mission of Enriching Lives, Impacting Communities, and Building Legacies. I commend you for the exquisite work and would recommend Formcraft to other businesses in need of aligning their space to meet both their functional and aesthetic wishes.”
- Chief Financial Officer, Northwestern Mutual, Eastern Pennsylvania

Ready to discover what a design-build partnership could look like for your company? Book a Discovery Call with us today.

Book a Discovery Call

Financial Services Workplace Design

FAQs

Project timelines usually range from 4 to 8 months depending on the scope, size, and approval cycles involved. Formcraft accelerates this by integrating strategy, design, and construction under one roof. By aligning decision-makers early and reducing change orders later, we help financial institutions make confident, timely progress without compromising on quality or compliance.
Workplace strategy creates clarity where ambiguity can lead to missteps. It helps align diverse leadership perspectives, navigate regulatory zoning, and assess hybrid behaviors across business units. This ordered approach saves time and reduces internal conflict. Most importantly, it ensures that what’s built is usable, functional, and aligned to the organization’s core values and priorities.
We begin by identifying which teams require separation due to legal, compliance, or operational reasons. From there, we zone layouts to ensure functional security, physical boundaries, and proper access. We also factor in support spaces, like copy rooms or shared services, to reduce risk and meet governance requirements across departments and regions.
This is a common challenge. Our strategy process creates space for these discussions. Through surveys, interviews, and leadership workshops, we uncover friction points and define shared goals. The result is a solution that supports presence without forcing behavior. Instead of mandates, we design spaces people want to use, balancing company culture with employee experience.
We coordinate multi-site projects through a unified team, consistent project tracking, and centralized planning resources. Our design-build model means fewer handoffs and clearer communication across teams. Whether you’re building in one market or five, we help ensure your workplace vision is delivered with accuracy, consistency and speed.

If that sounds useful, let’s set up a time to talk.

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