The turbulent events that shook financial services companies this week are set to inspire “dramatic change” in the industry both in the U.S. and around the world, said managing directors at research and advisory services firm TowerGroup on Friday.

In a special webcast presentation, the experts provided their opinion on industry-wide repercussions that can be expected in the weeks and months ahead.

“I don’t think you could ask for a more exciting or interesting week in financial services,” said Robert Hegarty, TowerGroup’s managing director and practice leader for securities and investments and insurance.

TowerGroup anticipates a global slowdown in financial services, as well as widespread evaluation of all regulatory structures. Specifically, Hegarty said regulators are likely to intervene in an unprecedented manner moving forward.

“We should prepare for a round of overregulation,” he said, but added that given the current U.S. election, such changes to regulation in the United States may be delayed a few months until the new administration is in place.

Within the banking sector, the trend of consolidation can be expected to continue in the U.S. and worldwide, said Kathleen Khirallah, managing director and practice leader for banking at TowerGroup.

Such consolidation involves a significant amount of integration effort and often results in branch closures and job losses in the pursuit of improved efficiency. Khirallah said it’s too soon to assess these types of impacts in the current — and continuing — wave of consolidation.

“We can expect to see additional consolidation activity, but in terms of when and how and what the final configurations look like, it’s still too soon to call,” she said.

With consumers growing increasingly concerned about the state of the financial sector, the average consumer is going to become much more knowledgeable about bank insurance regulations in the coming months, Khirallah added.

As consumers do their research, credit quality will become the new mantra for banks and finance companies and risk management will take on a new urgency.

“Banks globally are going to be competing for deposits,” Khirallah said.

The experts noted that the recent events have thrown the entire business model of large standalone banks into question.

They added that some of recent industry shakeups are not necessarily permanent, however. Hegarty said that as markets recover, there’s a strong possibility that investment banks that have recently been acquired could once again spin out into their own enterprises.

“The risk profile doesn’t — and never will — fit,” Hegarty said, noting that Bank of America has admitted that investment banking is a difficult business to manage.

In the wake of insurance giant American International Group’s involvement in the turmoil, too, Hegarty said the past week has made clear the extent to which the financial services industry has become intermingled.

He said insurance companies can expect regulators to begin looking more carefully at the business in which they’re involved.

“There are a lot of changes on the horizon,” said Hegarty.