The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all areas of risk, including financial risk, operational risk, and financial crime compliance. This gives rise to a tension between the need to augment risk capabilities in this new environment with the simultaneous downward pressure on IT budgets due to the economic situation. Adoption of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and intelligent automation can help by enhancing a firm's risk capabilities to better deal with the heightened exigencies of the crisis while at the same time increasing efficiency to ease cost pressures. Firms that are not putting new technologies in place immediately may be thinking of adding them in the medium term.