Ben Telfer:
Hope you’re all well, and welcome to today’s ICMIF webinar looking at the response of three ICMIF member companies to the COVID-19 pandemic that is impacting us all. I’m sure many of you are aware that ICMIF has been collating and monitoring the responses of its members since the outbreak of the pandemic in mid-March. We have more than 70 examples of how members are helping their member/policyholders and their local communitie; and in terms of financial contribution and assistance, we have calculated it’s totalled more than USD 1 billion.
Today we’re delighted to be joined by three ICMIF members who will share a little bit about the initiatives that they’ve implemented to support their policyholders, to support their employees, and to have a bigger impact on to the wider society. So, I’m delighted to be joined by Gina, Guillaume and Ayanda today, each will give a short introductory presentation and, as I said, we’ll have some time for some discussion and some Q&A. So, firstly from the UK, I’m pleased to introduce Gina Fusco. Gina is the Director of Strategy and Marketing at NFU Mutual. Gina is also the Chair of the ICMIF Intelligence Committee. Gina, welcome. Thank you for joining us, and I’ll hand over to you.
Gina Fusco:
Thank you very much, for inviting me along to talk about what we’ve been doing at NFU Mutual for COVID. For those of you who may not be particularly familiar with our business I thought I’d just give you a really short background, just to give you some context about who we are and who we sort of serve. We were founded in 1910 by seven farmers and we do still offer expert insurance to the farming community, but we’ve also grown to become quite a name outside of farming too, and we offer a range of non-farm commercial personal cover and also life insurance. We’ve got about 900,000 members and we operate through 300 agent offices, so that is just a little bit of general background.
When the coronavirus hit we clearly, like everybody else, had to really think about what would our priorities be, and it went along these lines, and then the slide isn’t moving. But, really what we wanted to do was to protect. We wanted to protect our staff, honour our essential commitments that we’ve made to existing customers, our agents, and other business partners and, of course, importantly at these difficult times to maintain our reputation. And so that meant that we needed to try to make sure that our staff could be safe, but still serve our customers. We wanted to see if there were specific things that we could do for the different customer segments that we serve, to help them and, of course, the communities that our agents operate in and our members live in are very important to us, and we wanted to understand if there was anything we could do to support them.
And then finally, our agents are actually self–employed businesses, so for them there was a possibility that some of them might face financial challenge through this period and we wanted to make sure that we could support them as well. Just going on to the next slide, thank you. So, the very first thing, obviously, that we have to think about and I’m sure all of your businesses it was the same thing, was our people. Within two weeks with the lockdown being implemented here, of our 4,000 employees only four didn’t have the tools they needed to work from home, and that was because in their area they didn’t have any broadband. And I can say that there are only 40 people that actually have to work in an office, and that’s for essential services like the post room, for example.
100% of our customer facing staff in our regional service centers, neutral direct call center are able to deal with customers, and it’s really easy for me to say that, I think that must have taken about a minute, but in reality it was a Herculean effort to do that, and very much driven by some great work from our IT team but, I also have to say, a real can do spirit amongst our staff as well, and that enabled us I think to do that successfully. When this happened in the UK, there was a huge amount of talk in the media about people potentially losing their jobs, or being furloughed, in the UK the government said that they would allow businesses who were struggling to furlough their staff, which meant that the government would pay up to 80% of their salary for a period of time to try to take pressure off of businesses, but you can imagine that it was a very anxious time for many people, and probably for our staff too.
We immediately reassured them, we said there would be nobody would be furloughed, no jobs would be lost, all staff would be kept on full pay, and we still pay people even if they couldn’t work from home, and we also decided that the salary increases that we’d set for the year, they would be maintained as well. And I think that was really important, to help people to feel secure at a time when, honestly, all of us felt rather anxious. And, of course, throughout that period the other important thing was maintaining a really constant stream of communication and information to our staff, about what was going to be happening to them, but also to help them to answer queries for many of our customers
From a member perspective, we also clearly wanted to make sure that we were able to support our customers and members during this time, and we did that in a range of different ways. The first thing was we announced, we looked at insurance support, we announced an overall package on sixth of April of measures which was £32 million (which is about €36 million and $39 million dollars). So, in the insurance space essentially we announced a combination of things which was pricing changes, extending cover, claims initiatives to basically speed up and make claims easier for example. In our case many of our members, actually, are still operating as usual, particularly from a motor point of view, are still driving their vehicles.
We decided not to try to pay out a blanket amount to cover any reduction in mileage, which is something that I think Guillaume will talk about shortly, but we felt that in order to ensure fairness, what we really wanted to do was be proactive in supporting customers by amending cover and premiums according to the individual circumstances, we do have quite a wide range of customers and they all have very different insurance needs. From a financial services point of view we were very conscious that the markets at this time have just been so volatile, and it was clear that people were also feeling quite worried about what was going to be happening to their pension pots, and those people who are about to retire, for example. I think they were beginning to feel quite concerned.
We wanted to, again, make sure that our members have the right information and advice, and support, and we made sure that our financial advisors could all operate virtually, and we proactively were able to contact customers who we knew might be concerned, and be there for them at that time to help them when they weren’t really sure what to do next. Community’s an important part of the Mutual’s focus and we wanted, again, to make sure that we could help to support local, as well as national initiatives around COVID. And so we allocated two million pounds to do that, through a number of different mechanisms. One was to give donations to national charities, and the other was to set up an agency gifting fund which meant that each agent office could essentially nominate a charity or charities in their area that they felt they particularly wanted to support, who were doing good work. And, again, I think that’s been really helpful, and hopefully it’s helped the local communities too.
Finally, we’re on the agency side, I said, there’re individual businesses and we were concerned that some of them might find they get cash flow difficulties and so, again, we put aside some money to say that, “Yes, we could help and provide floats if necessary.” And then finally, and this is something that I… It was at a time when many of the UK banks were being banned from paying dividends, and the regulator was also asking insurance companies to carefully consider whether or not it should pay dividends. We have something called mutual bonus, this is our way of returning capital to our members, and it’s an annual bonus that’s paid through a reduction in premiums.
We decided that we would continue to commit to paying that bonus out in 2020, which is worth £220 million, and the discounts range from, if you’ve been for your first renewal it’s 11% of your premium up to 16.5%. So, there was quite a broad range of measures that we put in place to help and support all the various stakeholders and communities that we thought were important to us as a mutual.
The key thing for us as well is, I think I mentioned, we have quite a diverse set of customers. So, again, we looked at each of the individual segments and really try to understand what would be appropriate and important to them and, so for example, farmers and uncollected milk. And that sounds a strange one, but for those people who are dairy farmers, they would have been supplying milk perhaps to cafes and coffee shops, while under lockdown they were all closed and, so it meant that the milk wasn’t being collected, so that was quite an important and helpful cover extension for them.
The commercial businesses, just as an example of that, it was extending cover for them for new types of services that they might be offering. So, many were offering their vehicles or employees for voluntary for example. And then on a personal customer side, then we were trying to understand, again, what might not be covered and we’re all working from home now, and it’s not a core part of our policy to cover people for working from home and, so therefore we extended cover for that too. I think the big thing for us is as well, is we’ve been really alert to customers and making sure we’ve understood if they’re experiencing financial difficulties, or if they seem to be in vulnerable circumstances. So, making sure we’re having a conversation with them to adjust their policies, basically according to their individual circumstances and needs, we’ve never charged fees or charges for any kind of changes to policies anyway. But, obviously having that conversation and making sure that we can help them to reduce their covers if that’s going to help them, or indeed even offering payment holiday if that’s appropriate for the individual.
In terms of communities, we’ve got really strong reputations for supporting communities and charitable causes, and I mentioned that we’ve put this package together for two million pounds. So, on a national level that meant giving donations to things like the National Emergency Fund, which was specifically around COVID, or the Samaritans who are a major national organization to help, particularly, around people feeling suicidal. We also recognized that as lockdown went on, what became apparent is that it was beginning to have quite an impact on people’s mental health. One of the charities that we support is Farm Safety Foundation, and the Farm Safety Foundation has been concentrating in the last couple of years on mental health and safety as much as physical health, and so we basically linked up with them and asked them to help us to put together a guide with how to cope with the stresses of COVID. And we made that available to all of our customers, and members, and agents, and we did put that more widely out too, and I think that people found that a very helpful thing, we had some lovely commentary back.
The agency gifting fund is something that I mentioned, and you can see a picture there of Voluntary Action Angus. That was the agency, and they decided they would like to support this particular charity, and this Voluntary Action Angus has got 1,200 volunteers who have been helping people by delivering shopping, prescriptions, essential, telephone, befriending services, to vulnerable customers in those communities. So, it was a really lovely thing for us to be able to support on the ground, which would fit the people in the local areas of our agent, and I know that Jeremy Parker who’s the agent there said that he was so proud to be able to support the frontline work of Voluntary Action Angus, because they’ve been doing such a tremendous job and helping their community.
For us, this is some quite an evolving picture. So, these were some things I’ve talked about, our responses we made fairly early on, what we’ve done since then is continue to try to understand, is there anything more we can do to help people, and I’ve just mentioned a couple of things that we’ve done more recently. So, we launched a Remote Health & Safety Service for Farmers & Commercial customers, that was around helping them to have an understanding of how they should be operating their businesses to be safe, basically for their own people or indeed for customers as they serve them. And that was something that was provided as a free service, and we have a number of safety risk managers who are experts in this area and we said, “If you wanted to have a conversation with an expert around it, then please contact us.” And, again, I think that’s something that customers really appreciated.
Last Friday, we announced three additional RAC cover for National Recovery break down and cover for all of our customers, and the reason for that, is because lockdown for us is beginning to ease and there’s a lot of people who, there will be some people who haven’t driven a car in a while, and it might well be that they can’t, it doesn’t start. So, we decided that we’d also make sure that everybody had that cover for free, and obviously what we’ve done is we’ll just continue to monitor everything that’s happening, our regulator is clearly very active in this whole area, and we continue to work closely with them as well. So, that was the community aspect.
If I move on to the reputation side, through all of this, one of the things I think we were a little worried about, and I would say I was concerned about is that the insurance sector as a whole in the UK has had a huge amount of negative media coverage. There’s been a lot of attention on why aren’t certain insurance payout for certain things in this pandemic situation, and we were quite concerned about making sure that we were able to manage our reputation. So, to do that we’ve had quite an integrated plan, really, of communication, so we’ve had clear communications to journalists and publications, we’ve done a great deal around PR, and we also introduced a new TV execution just to remind people that, actually, we are still open for business, we are able to help you remotely, and also to thank all of the key workers of whom many of our members are, for everything they’re doing through this situation.
The overall response to this has been really positive I’m pleased to say. We continue to monitor all of the reactions, whether that’s from customers, or whether that’s more widely. I think in these situations it really is important to make sure that you’ve got the information about what’s happening to the levels of trust amongst your customers in the wider market, and also your reputation. Feedback’s been actually very positive, but I don’t believe in resting on laurels and, so we remain vigilant, and hopefully responsive to customer and agent feedback. I’m pleased to say that our reputation is still strong, so if I look across the sentiment across the media, PR and social media, we’ve got 99.9% positive sentiments, which is pretty incredible, I think, given the times that we’re in.
And we’ve also put in some additional tracking and research so that we can really understand in detail, on an ongoing basis, amongst different types of sectors, how they’re feeling in general, but also around what we’re doing. I see in the first wave of the results, I need to continue to be positive, which is great. But, as I say, we don’t rest on our laurels and we continue really just to look at, is there more that we could be doing, but for the moment that’s where we’ve got to in our response. Thank you very much, that’s all I wanted to say.
Ben Telfer:
Okay, that’s great. We’ve had a number of questions in, but Gina I’ll just ask you one quickly. You mentioned that regulator told insurers, stock list insurers, not to pay dividends. Did they have anything to say about you still paying your Mutual Bonus or were they happy for you to do that?
Gina Fusco:
No, we have conversations with the regulator frequently and, no, I think we haven’t really had any negative response from them. I think we were very clear about why we felt we would do that, we’re not in a position where we’re furloughing our staff, we’re not taking up any of those government aids, we feel we have the capital strength to continue to give back to our customers, and so therefore we felt that was appropriate, and our members. So, no, they’ve accepted that.
Ben Telfer:
Excellent. Right, we’ll move on to our second speaker. Guillaume Allenet, who is a Public Affairs Officer for MAIF, a mutual insurance company in France. Thank you for joining us Guillaume, I will hand over to you.
Guillaume Allenet:
Okay, great. First of all, thank you very much for hosting this webinar. Gina had a very interesting first intervention, as well I’d like to present me very quickly. To start with, I don’t know, if you can go to the next slide please? Yes, so MAIF was created in 1934, and is actually nowadays the sixth largest motor and home insurance in France, with approximately 3.6 million vehicles insured, and we’re also today the fifth largest home insurer in France with 3.3 million home and facilities insured, and the first insurer of associations and public institutions.
We actually also have 3 million insured member, which is approximately 7 million people insured, and we have been awarded number one in customer relations for more than 15 years in a row now. And actually at the very core of our DNA is our raison d’être, so our purpose, which is the sincere care towards the others and the world.
This is actually at the core of MAIF’s DNA and identity, which is “Each Act Counts”. So, as we aim at being a human and world centered company we perform daily to make the world a better place, and even in tough economic and sanitary time, and the coronavirus crisis were actually the good time for that. We implemented a few measures that I’m going to present right now, those measures were towards members, employees, and the whole society, as we try to have an impact on the entire society itself.
First, MAIF have contributed to all the measures that were taken by French insurers, the whole French insurance sector had a strong involvement to help solve the crisis. So, first, there has been a one billion governmental solidarity fund, and the insurance sector gave €400 million towards small and medium sized companies who faced a decrease of their activity, so MAIF of course contributed to that fund. The second measure was the fact that the insurer agreed on an investment plan of €1.5 billion in SME middle sized business and also towards the Medical Center, as well MAIF is contributing to that investment plan. The third measure is towards small enterprises in SME and their economy difficulties, it’s actually twofold. On the one hand it’s about deferring rent payments for very small businesses and SME, belonging to sectors where the activity has been interrupted during lockdown where the French Government actually closed a number of businesses.
And on the other hand, it was maintaining insurance cover for SME facing difficulties, or delay in terms of payments during the whole lockdown, so basically the two months of lockdown that we’ve had in France. The last part that we supported, and actually contributing to towards the French Insurance Federation, is working on the creation of an insurance coverage in case of major sanitary disaster, in order to improve the cover for enterprises in the future concerning operating losses. So, this has been what MAIF has been doing all about on a national ground with all the other insure, so basically supporting and contributing to those measures.
And then we had our own response and, as I said, this response is about employees, members, and the entire society. So, I’m going to start with the measures that we had towards our employees. Prior to the lockdown MAIF very soon actually adopted a prevention plan that consisted in two things. First, we organized home office, very soon, so that we could actually have all the employees of MAIF working from home, so basically during lockdown we’ve been working from home, the entire company, which is approximately 8,000 employees working from their home, and we also provided all our employees with laptops.
This is a very simple measure, but it has actually two goals. First one was to maintain or activity, and the second one was to be able to face a possible second lockdown, and at the end of it resilience has been a top priority for MAIF through the pandemic and we have been ready since day one to face the pandemic. The second measure that we took was to decide to close all of our sites, so even though insurance companies are not compelled during lockdown, even though we decided to close all our sites, so retail agencies, call centers, claim centers, and even the headquarter, we just actually kept IT staff there working, but all over France we closed all the site that we had. Then, as I said, the general home office for everyone, and even now after lockdown we have decided to maintain a very high level of home office as much as possible.
The security of the people working at MAIF is a top priority, so it’s very progressively going now. And the last measure that we took for employees, is that we have decided to maintain wages at the level of 100%. Whatever the situation of the employee is, so either the full employment or temporary employment, we decided to maintain wages at 100%. So, those were the measures for the employees, and now I’m going to do the measures towards our members.
The first one that we took, and we actually took it pretty soon, it was on the second of April, with the huge vehicle damage decrease we couldn’t actually not do anything about it, so we decided to refund one million euros to our member. They actually could decide either to receive cash on the basis of €30 per vehicle insured, or they could decide to donate this money to either French hospitals, to Medical Research Center that actually is working on a vaccine, or to a French NGO that is fighting poverty. So, as I said, we took this measure very soon, it was the second of April, and we actually talked about that with Ben Telfer and ICMIF, and according to ICMIF MAIF was the first global insurer in the world to announce auto premium refunds. So, that’s something that we also implemented very soon.
Second, call centers, we maintain efficiency there and up to date we were able to answer all calls, emails or claim from our members in the same way as actually before the coronavirus crisis. And last but not least, it’s about insurance coverage extension. Two things, the first one is that we take in charge the insurance of goods that have been lent by the employer so, for instance, if your employer gives you a computer or laptop during the lockdown, we would actually cover it. And second, we provide with the professional use cover in the event of a car damage, following the suspension of public transport if you had to take your car to go to work, we would extend the professional use cover. So, those were the response that we have towards our member but, as I said at the beginning of my intervention, the very DNA of MAIF is “Each Act Counts”. So, we had to give an answer to face the coronavirus pandemic for the entire society.
This is actually what we did. First, we decided to give away the temporary unemployment state subsidies that represents €50 million. We’re entitled to it, but we decided to give up on that. The second thing that we did was actually contributing to a solidarity fund and a recovery plan for associations and social enterprises, the amount that is here on the slide is actually not the very precise one. Second, we decided to anticipate the payments to our suppliers, so they can avoid economic difficulties as much as possible, and so they can be protected from delays of payments. We are very close to the education environments, so we have a scholarship and learning tools and resources that are available online, we have decided to make them available free for everyone online. And the second thing we did, is that we actually have an online platform that is called Sharentraide, it’s a platform that we usually activate in case of natural catastrophe, but this time we decided to activate it to face the pandemic.
It’s an online platform, it is free, you do not need to be a MAIF member to subscribe, you actually go there to help people that are seeking for help. So, for instance, during the crisis it could have been grocery shopping or it could have been hosting a nurse or medical staff. So, you go on the platform and you put your name and what you seek for, if you want to help or if you want to get helped, and then you get an email with the person that matches your need. So, that was the last part, what we did for the entire society. I know it’s very condensed but 10, 15 minutes spread, everything it’s very short. If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer.
Ben Telfer:
Very comprehensive package from MAIF and, as I said at the start of this webinar, we have been actively tracking and monitoring the responsive, not just ICMIF members but other insurers around the world, and we’re very confident that MAIF were actually the first insurance company to offer the most refund to their policyholders. I do have a quick question on that for you, Guillaume, before we move on to Ayanda. You mentioned that policyholders have the choice between a cash refund or the chance to donate to local hospitals, do you know what percentage of customers did either?
Guillaume Allenet:
Actually, I don’t have the exact percentage, but if you want I could get back to you on that. I think that they’ve been consolidating the data from members.
Ben Telfer:
Okay, no worries, just a quick question. Anyway, why don’t we move on to our third and final speaker, Ayanda Seboni. Ayanda is Executive: Communications, Brand and Marketing at PPS in South Africa. Ayanda, thank you for joining us, and I’m pleased to hand over to you.
Ayanda Seboni:
Thank you very much to everyone who has tuned in, I would like to share with you the PPS South Africa experience in responding to COVID-19. So, when the whole COVID situation broke out we obviously had to look from a PPS perspective and see how do we respond to it, but we obviously operate within a specific context. We’ve got what I call a triple threat, and our triple threat is that we’ve got… South Africa is a big country, and we’ve got levels of poverty that are very, very high. Another issue that we have is that we have a high prevalence of TB as well as HIV, I think HIV is well known, the challenge that we have in South Africa with HIV is well known, but when it comes to the prevalence of tuberculosis that is also another challenge, and when you have people with HIV and tuberculosis, it makes the problem a lot more complex.
When you have that you also have the issues of access to health, education, living standards, and people not necessarily having work, and then the next layer is the number of professionals that are available in the country to support our health system. We probably have a third, or less than a third, of what France would have, for example, in terms of doctors and nurses per thousand. So, we had another issue when it came to that and we needed to… When we’re solving for the problems, look at all these different stakeholders and see where we are going to focus. So, from a PPS perspective, if you can move on, we are a company that’s founded in 1941, and we deal with the professional segment, which is less than two percent of the South African population.
When we’re looking at our response we had to think about, where do we target our efforts, and who do we serve. So, PPS being founded in 1941 by a dentist, we’ve got a very strong market share when it comes to the health sector. So, we looked and said, “Well, if we are to do anything, where will we have the highest level of impact to society as well as to our members? Because these two things cannot be in conflict with one another.” And we realize that the best place to hit would be to look at our professional health workers and see how we can help there. We also cover, not only from a life perspective, we don’t only cover just mortality, but we also cover sickness. So, when someone is ill and unable to work we have some exposure there. So, we looked and said, “Well, what’s the best way for us to help?” And the Nexus for us, really, has been around keeping our health professional safe.
In South Africa as of the 26th of May this was our situation, so we were quite early in terms of having our lockdown, but we’ve already lost over 500 people since the 81 days ago when the virus hits our shores. But, it is a developing story and our approach has been lockdown in order to prepare our country for what was coming, because we can’t stop the virus and we don’t have enough resources to stop the virus, but what we can do is get ourselves ready. So, the country has prepared, we’ve prepared field hospitals, getting ready for what’s going to happen, but we also are looking at trying to prevent. So, the regulations are still there and we’re moving up, so the lockdown has been reduced somewhat, but we recognize that we’re not going to stop it, we need to operate within it.
In terms of PPS’ response, we had to look at multiple ways of responding to this pandemic. And the first was looking at our members and saying, “Well, what are the things that we need to do?” Firstly, the premium relief. So, we said to them, “If you’re unable…” Because as soon as the lockdown happened many businesses couldn’t operate, even in the medical field, people didn’t go to doctors as much as they could because they didn’t want to expose themselves, and doctors didn’t want to be exposed. So, when we looked at premium relief we looked at what solutions we currently had in place and how we could beef up those solutions, so that people are not worried about losing cover, because it’s one thing to be worried about losing your income but if you can’t even get cover for yourself and your business, that’s an even bigger worry.
We looked at premium relief for all our members in the short as well as in the long term, and we didn’t use a one size fits all approach. We said, “Work with your financial advisor and depending on your situation, we would have different options that are available for different members.” Obviously, members that have been with us for longer have something called the profit share statement, because we give back 100% of the profits that we make on an annual basis to our members, and they would have some capital sitting there, and we allowed some liquidity in that particular profit share account. The second was to alleviate anxiety with our members, we updated our team’s protocol. So, we didn’t take a strict insurance, this is what the contract says, but we looked at the situation and said, “Okay, so what happens if one of our members finds themselves in a situation where they are a person under investigation, they’re not sure whether they have the virus or they don’t have, but they’ve been told to self isolate.”
From an income perspective, they stopped earning because they can’t go into the office to start working. So, what we did is we said, “For as long as you are a person under investigation, we would start covering your income with our sickness benefits.” So, we didn’t have to have proof that you were COVID-19 positive, but we said, “If you are suspected of having it and there is enough independent evidence, we would then cover that particular claim.” And for us that was important because it showed our dedication to our mutuality ethos, to say, “We will cover you not because you’re sick, but because we suspect that you are.” Because we don’t want our members going out and putting themselves in extra strain and exposure, because they can’t afford not to carry on working.
And then when under financial assistance we looked at our employees, and we looked at some of our suppliers. So, with our employees, the South African Government also said, “If you can’t afford to pay you can stop paying and they can claim from the Unemployment Insurance Fund.” But, we chose not to take that option and continue to pay our employees whether or not they could work, or they couldn’t. We also migrated everyone to working from home within a period of about, it was just over a week that we had to get everyone, order new laptops and make sure that everyone was set up, and miraculously, it was just such a testament to the kind of teamwork and ethos in our business that everyone did what they needed to do, and by the time the lockdown happened all the people that needed to be set up remotely were already set up. So, 94% of our people were working from home.
We also took care of our sales people by making sure that there were, for the variable earners there were strategies that were in place so that they don’t end up losing out. For our professional indemnity customers, particularly in the medical field, we looked at their premiums and immediately implemented a discount on their premiums, as well as from a motor insurance perspective, we refunded because we realized that our exposure was less as less people were traveling, we gave them a refund back into their bank accounts. And then working with the professional community, so these are the professional associations, to understand, particularly with medical professionals, to understand where the main challenges were for those communities and respond to them. So, we’re working very closely with the associations bodies that represent our professional members.
What we also did is realizing that the big nexus point for trying to beat this virus, and trying to protect our members, would be in the space of protective equipment. We saw what was going on in Italy, we were lucky that the virus hit as much later, we saw what happened in China, and we saw what was going on also in the US. And we also heard, very early on, that PPE is a big differentiator and PPE is the one thing that, if there’s a shortage of it, it creates multiple problems. Not only does it create problems for the recipients of healthcare, but also for healthcare workers. Now, if you refer back, the number of healthcare workers that are available in the country is very limited. So, we had to think very hard as to how do we protect our members while also protecting society as a whole.
We focused on ordering PPE, so PPS dedicated $2.2 million. That $2.2 million is being spread across different initiatives, but the first one has been the PPE. So, looking at not only doctors, but looking at nurses, looking at pharmacists, and dentists, focusing in academic hospitals because in academic hospitals, not only do you have the general community coming in, but you also have the teaching doctors, teaching nurses, that are there and we need to make sure that they are protected. Many of the ICUs with ventilation was happening there, so we also worked with the Association of the intensivist paediatric, as well as adults intensivist, because if anyone needs to go into ICU the intensivist would be the ones that were protecting them.
For the intensivist we’ve got a differentiated strategy where we bought for them hazmat suits, there are not many of them and we know exactly where they are located, because of our relationship with associations. We also looked at the smaller practices, especially in rural areas. You would have seen in the first light that we’ve got about 1.2 million kilometers of land, so doctors in rural areas are usually the only health care provider that a big community look to. So, we then decided we’re going to support them a whole lot more because most of them are self employed, and they don’t have big infrastructure that’s standing behind them.
And in all of this, what we’re trying to do is make sure that we impact our members lives positively, at the same time impacting the community, and especially when it comes to TB. A lot of the TB cases lie in the rural areas, and if a doctor falls or a nurse falls, the amount of people that can be cared for, the number of doctors that are available to care for them is very, very limited. So, it’s very important that people in rural areas are well taken care of.
Part of what we did in this type of dedicated approach is, we allocated a very senior resource in our business, and removed him from his day to day business and said, “Because this is such an important initiative for us, you need to come and manage this process.” And working with some of the board members that sits on the PPS board, who’ve got industry networks and know how, they sat together and decided what was the best way. And we think that we found a very nice way to link some of our strengths from an operational perspective, and some of the needs in the market. First, we used our financial advisor network, because they are the ones that know exactly where the clients are and understand what the situation is, they were our hands and feet, going out and telling our members, particularly healthcare members and, by the way, our PPE initiative is not limited just to members of PPS, but to all healthcare providers that meet the criteria.
Our financial advisors have been advised and they’re going out and spreading the word to say, “PPS is making this available to you, all you need to do is you need to apply online.” I think we all can acknowledge that we’ll never have enough PPE for all the needs in the country, so to find a way that is fair, we created an online system that people can apply, say where they are, and then we will dispatch that. So they’ll tell us, “Listen, this is what I need, I need 95 masks, X number of them, and I need gloves and all of those things.” So, what we did is we created an online application, and this individual who is running with this is looking at all these applications, and then making the allocations to say, “This is what we’re going to be sending to this doctor the next.”
The next one is, we looked at from a logistics and distribution perspective, you may have the best ideas and you may have the best PPE, but if you don’t have a good network to distribute, the stuff doesn’t get to it’s supposed to go to. So, we work with a pharmacy network, there’s a pharmacy group called Alfa Pharm, and they’ve got very strong reach in most of the rural areas. So, they’re there represented in the cities, but they’re also there in some of the rural areas. So, we are using their distribution network to assist us to deliver some of these things, and it’s amazing how when you start with an initiative, others will join you along the way. So, Alfa Pharm has come to the party as well as one of our suppliers that are supplying the PPE, they also contributed and gave a contribution to augment what we’re doing for our members.
This is the journey that we’ve undertaken so far but, for us, we feel this is only the beginning because the road ahead is unknown, we don’t know where we’re going to end up, we’re going into our winter season and we have done the best that we can to equip our members, and we have still left some funds in the kitty to respond to other things that may come up that we might not be aware of at this time. Thank you very much.
Ben Telfer:
We have about five minutes now for some questions and answers. Ayanda, I want to come straight to you with this question, but I’ll also go to Gina and Guillaume afterwards. What has been the response from other insurers in your market, and where have you seen that your response differs, and where can you see the advantage of being a mutual or a member-owned insurance company?
Ayanda Seboni:
So, different companies have responded differently. So, we also have something called the solidarity fund, and a lot of the others contributed to the national effort with the solidarity fund and did a lot of responses in terms of social impact. Although there’s also been some who’ve also responded when it comes to the healthcare workers, but I think our response has been a little bit more integrated. So, many other of our competitors immediately said, “We’re not taking on new business for sickness, for example, or income protection.” We continued to take on new business and give support. When it came to how they treated people when it comes to people that are under quarantine, our approach, because there is no conflict between us as the company and our members. We then had a much more lenient type of approach, a much more supportive type of approach in dealing with how we manage our members. So, for us it was, we were quick off the mark to say what we’re going to do because we didn’t have that level of conflict that others might have had.
Ben Telfer:
Gina, how about in the UK market? What’s been the response from other insurers and where have you seen the difference from what NFU Mutual has done?
Gina Fusco:
Yeah, I think, a bit like Ayanda really. Different insurance companies have come out with the different types of proposals and support for their customers, many of them in the mass market space of around things like personal motor, and the ones that are a bit more headline grabbing, if I put it like that. I suppose, I think everybody in the industry is genuinely trying to do their best, we’ve all signed up to the ABI code, which was I think quite important around setting out some minimum standards, if you like, for the industry as a whole.
I think everybody’s trying to do their best. I think the big difference for us goes back to that, the fact that we’re a mutual not a PLC, I do think that that makes quite a big difference for us in our ability, and how we think about how we want to respond, we are able to look at the long term and do that, we are definitely focused on what’s going to be right for our members, we don’t necessarily have to worry therefore about the market view and our share price, and I do think that that can mean that some of the insurance providers have to operate slightly differently, and potentially means that they can’t be as focused on their customers. And I think for us it’s just very clear who is that we serve, and our attention goes to that do that.
Ben Telfer:
Guillaume, in France, what’s been the reaction in French market?
Guillaume Allenet:
Well, as I said at the beginning of my presentation, there’s been a common response, and then you could have mutuals’ responses, which is actually what we did. So, as I presented the various measures, I think you can have a great view on the market. There’s been very few examples in France, of modern premium refund, but so far MAIF has been the only one to go that far in refund.
Ben Telfer:
Thank you, Guillaume. I think we’ve got time for one more question, and it alludes to something that Gina brought up about reputational damage. Have you found managing your reputation as a mutual insurer has been easier, or has it been more difficult due to the fact that you are a member focused and there has been an element of not being able to pay claims on certain lines, such as business interruption? Gina, perhaps I’ll come to you first for that one, and then go to Ayanda and Guillaume. Gina, What have you got, thoughts on that?
Gina Fusco:
Well, I think in terms of reputation, as I said in the presentation, I think from the start we were very conscious that this could be a potential moment that there could be some negative reaction, because I think it’s probably the first times, perhaps even since that Foot and Mouth disease happened, that really something has occurred, which absolutely a pandemic, which is that we haven’t… It’s not covered within the policies, and we haven’t taken premiums for it, and in some small number of cases in the commercial side, we haven’t been able to pay out. I think, actually, I think we’ve probably found that quite hard as an organization, but we are an insurance company, we do have to think about our overall membership and do what’s right by them and I think we really try very hard to make sure that we are adapting covers, and helping our members as best possibly can.
In terms of the impact of that on the reputation, I think that was my worry, was that, given that we have such a high level of trust, given that our customers have always been so appreciative with what we’ve done, and any way you look at it, any score you look at, even the retention levels, they’re also high, was that in a situation where you maybe have to say, Actually, “Do you know what, on this occasion, no, you’re not covered and we can’t pay it.” I was concerned that, that might do some damage. However, I don’t think I’m really seeing that, of course, it’s uncomfortable for us and it’s not very pleasant for those members that it has occurred with.
It’s a small number of our members but, as I said, at the moment the indications are all very positive, and what we try to do is just be really honest about why we’re doing it, why we are doing these things, but we can’t do that thing, but obviously having conversations with them at the same time about, “How else can we help you?” This is a real problem.
Ben Telfer:
Ayanda, what about at PPS?
Ayanda Seboni:
At PPS, initially when the news broke that this is now a pandemic, the media led with stories that insurance companies are going to not want to pay, because it’s almost like an act of God. So, it gave a lot of relief to people when we came out early and said, “Look, we are going to pay for this. These are the conditions under which you are covered, and we were also quite lenient in terms of that.” So, what it did do for us is, from a consumer perspective the responses or the positivity and neutral sentiment towards PPS actually increased. So, our positive sentiment increased, not quite as high as the farmers, but in general. And then from an intermediary perspective, we actually came out tops in the NMG report, with intermediaries being very impressed with the way that we responded, and about 63% of them saying, “Listen, I would place business with PPS just as a result of this.” The way that they responded, so I think it did as good.
Ben Telfer:
That’s amazing, that’s almost like Gina’s is 99.8% positive sentiment on social media.
Gina Fusco:
99.9%!
Ben Telfer:
99.9%! sorry I wrote that down wrong. I do apologize.
Gina Fusco:
It’s a PR insight for you.
Ben Telfer:
Guillaume, a final comment from you on this sort of reputation damage, potential damage to MAIF and mutuals in the French market?
Guillaume Allenet:
Yeah. Well, once more my answer is going to be very similar to before. As I said, as we actually announced the refund very early, we had messages especially, actually, on social medias. Messages of support, even from actors, humorists, politics, they were actually telling, for instance, on Twitter that they were proud to be a member at MAIF, that they are recognizing themself in a company that is human centered, and we had a message of just say thank you to Congrats, or even sometimes you could see people tagging their own insurer on Twitter and saying, “Oh well, MAIF did that. I read that on the news, what about you?”
It was overall a very positive impact during this period. Once more, I think that what’s very special at MAIF is that people want to recognize themself in a company that has a high standard of commitment, and I think that on the decisions that we made during lockdown were very embedded, that DNA, and I think that there were a huge feeling of pride among members when we did all that announcements.
Ben Telfer:
Very much so, that’s an excellent way to end. Afraid we do have to end there, if anybody has any further questions please do send them in, and I’m sure today’s speakers will be happy to answer them. Thank you so much for presenting today, really appreciate you keeping your initial presentations to 10 to 12 minutes. I’m sure you could have spoken a lot longer on the various comprehensive packages that you’ve announced, and really great to see how they are truly member focused, which really shows the mutual difference that you have.
As I mentioned earlier, a number of news stories are on our website, and if you check out the web page or there at social media, you will see about 70-80 examples of what ICMIF members are doing around the world. A final thanks to today’s speakers, thank you for everyone that joined us, please stay safe and see you all soon. Have a good day.
The above text has been produced by machine transcription from the webinar recording. ICMIF has made every effort to ensure that transcriptions are as accurate as possible, however, in some cases some text may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. Listening to or watching the webinar recording will allow you to hear the full text as delivered during the webinar but this is available in English only. Our transcriptions are provided to enable members to select the language of their choosing using the dropdown menu above.
