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Far from gumming up business, the shift to remote work, a notion that many bank execs would've scoffed at pre-crisis, has actually facilitated greater productivity. In the age of the coronavirus, Wall Street bankers -- already notorious for long hours spent curating a white-glove experience for clients -- are finding they can provide even closer attention and care from afar. 

It turns out, when you take away the time spent at airports and restaurants, and when Zoom calls can be arranged in minutes, investment banking moves at a lightning-quick pace.

"We're able to get calls and work done extremely quickly because, as I said, nobody is at their kid's ballgame or out for dinner or on an airplane or at a board meeting," Ken Moelis, founder and CEO of Moelis & Co., said on the firm's first-quarter earnings call, according to a transcript from financial-data platform Sentieo. "When we've gotten calls to come up with ideas and help people, we had everybody on the phone just 5 or 10 minutes later. It's a stunning efficiency." 

The story is the same at PJT Partners, according to founder and CEO Paul Taubman, who said the absence of distractions like traveling and coordinating meetings has meant they're working harder and spending more time with clients than before. 

"We're not traveling, we're not spending all the time coordinating meetings. We're just getting on phone calls, video conferences, exchanging messages with clients," Taubman said. "And I think we're able to spend a lot more time for every minute of every hour, and every hour of every day, engaging with clients without any wasted time. So I think it's also enabled us to be far more intense and far more efficient."

The dynamic has played out in capital markets practices as well. For bankers tasked with sourcing and advising clients on debt deals, the shift to remote work has been fairly seamless -- especially since most of the action thus far has been dominated by sophisticated companies that frequently travel the bond markets. 

"The fact that you can't travel and you're sitting home in front of your screen with video-conference capability, with the ability to get on phone calls, it's incredibly, incredibly efficient with frequent issuers and sophisticated issuers," Richard Zogheb, global head of debt capital markets at Citigroup, told Business Insider.

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