Ben Telfer: 

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s ICMIF webinar. ICMIF is very pleased to be co-hosting today’s webinar with our regional association for Asia and Oceania, the AOA. So welcome to “COVID-19: How the mutual/cooperative sector is responding in Asia and Oceania”.  

I’m very pleased to be joined by three leaders of ICMIF member associations in the Asia and Oceania region. Firstly, we have Martin Stokes. Martin is CEO of MAS in New Zealand. We also have Noel Raboy, president and CEO of CLIMBS in Philippines, and finally, we have Melina Morrison, who is CEO of BCCM in Australia. 

Firstly I’d like to introduce Martin Stokes. Martin, thank you for joining us, and I’ll hand over to you. 

Martin Stokes: 

Thank you to ICMIF for giving us this opportunity to share our response to the pandemic. I’ve only got five slides, and not many bullet points as I would like to share this more as a story. But firstly, can I just tell you a little bit about MAS to set the scene. MAS or Medical Assurance Society as it used to be known is a New Zealand Mutual, established in 1921. So, we’re 99 years old and looking forward to our first century in just a year’s time.  

We were originally formed by a group of doctors and they remained the largest part of our mutual today, which is made up of a wide range of professionals and their families. And we also provide quite a wide range of services, including general and life insurance, as well as wealth management. We distribute through a group of salaried advisors in branches throughout the country. And we’re headquartered in the beautiful capital city of Wellington, which is pictured on this opening slide. And I can assure you that even though we’re in the middle of winter here, this is exactly how our city looks right now here today. 

The second slide that I wanted to cover with you is the business continuity phase of our experience of the pandemic. And I guess news of the pandemic first started to appear in our media around the middle of January. And by early March, we were already reviewing our capability to provide our critical services remotely. Although that hadn’t been mandated at that point, it was looking increasingly likely that we would need to do that. 

I recall and we’ll probably never forget at a meeting we held here internally on the 16th of March, we assembled a team of our technology people who advised we might be five or six weeks away at that stage from being able to stand up the capability to run our operation remotely. Now, that seemed to us to be probably longer than we would be able to expect the pandemic to not progress further. The pandemic was obviously operating to its own timeframe. So we asked our team to imagine what they would do if we only had one week. 

They advised that we look into this and see what could be done. Now we had no idea at that stage that almost exactly a week later, after New Zealand had reported around 52 cases, and the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, had announced we would be moving to a four level alert system, that within about 48 hours, we leaped from level two to level four. Effectively, we went into lockdown. So our hypothetical scenario had in fact become a fact. And incredibly, our technical teams and all those supporting them, had set all of our people up to be able to operate from their homes. 

That was critically important to us to be able to stand up our call center and our claims team at the very least. But we were in the fantastic position of being able to have all of our staff operating remotely from day one. We’d also had just rolled out collaborative working systems, Microsoft Teams, which gave our people more flexibility about how they collaborated on projects, rather than just relying solely on emails and calls. 

This was really the beginning of a quite amazing journey for us as we discovered how we could adapt to working in this distributed way, how we could support our staff and these very challenging environments where one size no longer fits all. But most importantly, our people all did and continued to do that amazing job in supporting our members sometimes from the most challenging of environments. 

Throughout the period, we provided our people with a package of pastoral care support, including access to wellbeing portals, additional allowances for the cost of operating from home, access to counselling services, flexibility around hours, which was particularly important for those with children at home, and additional leave where this was related to the pandemic. So once we’d established a stable operation … and I’m just going to move to the next slide now, our minds really turned to helping out our members. 

Quite early on we realized that the national lockdown was affecting our health professional members in quite counter-intuitive ways. You could be forgiven for assuming that health professionals, GPs, nurses, et cetera, would be in very high demand during a public health crisis. But in fact the opposite was strangely true. Because the public were ordered to stay home, to relieve pressure on the health system. Income for these medical practices dried up almost overnight. 

Specialists were left without any work whatsoever. And at the same time we realized that some of our policies weren’t going to respond to the pandemic in the way that either we or our members probably expected they would. Now some of these were around things like residency requirements which were relatively easy to resolve. But others were more difficult. And while the senior management crisis team was still meeting daily, we realized we needed to devolve decision making authority to where it could be exercised really quickly and meaningfully. 

So I guess another lesson for us was letting go of some of the usual hierarchical approaches, as that was essential to get the speed of response required. So the role of leadership really became all about providing direction, and giving confidence to the teams on the ground, to do what was needed and quickly. So there were four primary principles to our approach. The first, this is particularly in relation to our customers, to address the financial hardship for members who couldn’t access or had exhausted support provided by the government or their banks. 

To ensure members remained protected. The most important thing was to find a way for them to avoid having to give up the cover, because this was a time in which they needed their cover potentially more than ever. So this became an issue on the life side of our business where reinsurer’s risk appetite was tightening rapidly. So we became advocates for our membership base. An example of this is where some income protection policies were invalidated when working hours dropped below a certain threshold. 

We moved quickly to get agreement with our reinsurers that that wouldn’t apply to this unique set of circumstances. We also offered mental health and wellbeing support. We knew the pandemic would put enormous pressure on many of our members, probably more so than the general public, who were being asked to if you like retreat from the pandemic risk where our members and health professionals were effectively being asked to advance towards it. And we decided we’d pass back the savings we’ve made on motor vehicle claims to members. 

Simply because obviously for a period of time, there was a significant reduction in the amount of traffic on the roads and from that the cost of accidents. We also recently established a means of supporting New Zealand communities, particularly those with persistent health issues due to health and equity, and I’ll go to explain a little bit more on that shortly. For now I’ll just move to the next slide. I want to talk a little bit about our relief fund. 

So, while it was important to, I guess, communicate to our members that we were there to support them and help them, we wanted to do something much more tangible than that. I’ve touched on the support actually just thank you. Yeah. So this is the right slide now. So in April, a board approved a relief fund for hardship that provides for three months premium deferral, or we simply will pay the premium, for our members, which was managed through a dedicated hardship team. 

And while our members had been relatively well isolated compared to some New Zealanders, we still had to work with a number of members whose practices or self-employed income was impacted, or whose partners had lost jobs. We quickly also saw that the mental health of our essential workers was a growing issue. A significant portion of our membership were working long hours and in a very stressful environment, and their families were making sacrifices too. So we were able to stand up our wellbeing portal with health and COVID related content within about 10 days. 

We’ve also established free counselling services available to all our members and their families. It was something we’d set up earlier following the Canterbury earthquake sequence, and is something that has been of immense value. It’s a totally anonymous service, we don’t receive reports or anything on it, but we provide up to six counselling sessions for our members and or their family. 

As New Zealand is now in level one, and almost COVID free, we’re beginning to assess what the real savings in motor vehicle claims have been. And this’ll be as I said before, passed on as a premium reduction to policy holders. And then the final piece if you can just flick to the next slide now, of our COVID-19 response, was our engagement with the broader community. This is really aligned to an evolving approach we’re taking to thinking about our broader purpose as an organization. And as a mutual we believe that when our communities do well, we do well too. 

That informed our thinking when last year we established the MAS Foundation, which is a philanthropic organization that supports initiatives that make a difference to the health of new Zealanders, with a particular focus on traditionally underserved communities. Now again, timing was everything. The foundation had only just been formally established, and trustees appointed in December. And almost immediately they were called into action. So COVID-19 was a prime example of the health issue that affects some communities, more than others. They’re depending on the resources that they have to fall back on. 

These are precisely the health inequities that the foundation was set up to address. So the foundation made its first ever round of grants to organizations helping their communities prepare for the lockdown, and get through the tough times that we will face as our economy eventually recovers. The foundation has supported 10 projects so far, for a total of around a half a million dollars, covering organizations, supporting Maori and Pacific Island communities, youth organizations and innovative technological projects directed at dealing with the pandemic. 

For example, one of the funding projects supports an experimental process using ultraviolet light to recycle PPE gear for hospitals. And we’re now entering a phase I guess where we are considering the next horizon, whilst I wouldn’t like to think that the humanitarian or economic crisis as necessarily behind us, we need to start thinking about what we’ve learned, what does it mean for us, and what we’re going to do about it? Because we’re fairly confident, things won’t return to normal. 

We already know around half of our staff want the option to work up to half the time at home. We know many of our members are happy to conduct quite complex business via video technology. And we know we have to let go of some of the bureaucratic processes that can get in the way of progress. And finally, we’ve realized we’re just at the beginning of this discovery phase of our journey, and while the humanitarian challenges are immense, the opportunities for us to rethink our business model, and refine our purpose, are equally immense. 

Thanks, and I’d be very happy to answer any questions and also look forward to hearing the experiences of my fellow panellists. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you very much, Martin. That’s an excellent starter with a great case study from New Zealand about how MAS has responded to the pandemic and how you continue to look forward. There was one question Martin that did come in, that I think you actually covered right at the end there, looking at how New Zealand is past that lockdown phase. Around the world, you’re probably further ahead in terms of returning back to normal. How has that been to get back to normal or the “new normal”, so to speak? And which changes do you think will continue? Things like remote working, use of technology, and the decision–making processes? 

Martin Stokes: 

I think there’s always a risk of claiming victory early and while we went nearly three weeks or a little more than that without any new cases with just in the last week or so, had a number of new cases, mostly being caught at the border. So, that remains I think our weakest point, and what we’ll look to do as a community is ensure that … or as a country, look to ensure that those more porous points at the border, don’t become the source of a community outbreak. 

We’re just very mindful of that. From our perspective, it’s really clear to us. I’m in my office in the city at the moment where normally I would see from where I am probably 80 or 90 people. There are probably less than 25 here now. And we are seeing something like … less than a quarter of the normal numbers of people that we would expect in the office on a daily basis. That has been increasing. So we expect it to move back to levels of around 50/50, which is what our staff are telling us from surveys we’ve undertaken. 

If you haven’t done that, I’d recommend getting an indication from your people about what their own thoughts or plans are, because many have really discovered the benefits of a more flexible working life. It is almost certain that this would have evolved over a period of perhaps the next teen years. What the pandemic has done is bring all this forward into a rather rapid social experiment. They’ve all become rather used to collaborating via video and remotely. 

We all assume that probably would be hard. In fact, if anything, collaboration has worked at least effectively. There’s also been more communication both upwards and downwards and cross ways across the organization. And we can track this stuff. And it is remarkable. We have probably smashed a few myths that people had. And there are a few managers who are starting to learn that you don’t actually need to have people in front of you to get a sense of whether or not they’re productive or doing everything you’re asking of them. So, from that point of view, a remarkable and unexpected experiments and insights into perhaps a future. 

Ben Telfer: 

Excellent. Thank you for that Martin. I think everybody in the audience can probably appreciate that and some great advice about canvassing the opinion of your employees, simply because every employee is slightly different and many of them would have had a very positive experience in terms of their new working habits.  

Martin Stokes: 

The introverts help us to be training for this all their lives. 

Ben Telfer: 

Yes I know, we’ve heard that as well. We will move on to today’s second presenter. So it’s my pleasure to introduce Noel Raboy. Noel is President and CEO of our ICMIF member CLIMBS in the Philippines. Noel, thank you for joining us and I’ll hand over to you. 

Noel Raboy: 

Thank you, Ben. And thank you also for ICMIF for giving us the opportunity to present. We are experienced also here in the Philippines. We are a CLIMBS Life and General Insurance Corporative. We started as a corporate team in 1971. So we are moving into our 50th year. At the same time also, considering this pandemic, we are also in the 39th among the countries and second in Southeast Asia. So at present, I would like to introduce on what CLIMBS is all about at the start. 

We are more than 4,000 corporate teams in the Philippines. And we have also a lot of subsidiaries. We have the drug agency now to the CIM Institute, and we have also our products. We have also our company and then investment and advisory. We have also our capital liquidity investment and real estate and printing press. 

At present, we still get the standing as the number one micro insurer in the Philippines. So most of our policy holders are purely micro. The premium is within the minimum wage in the Philippines. And by the way, CLIMBS situated weighted around more than 800 miles away from the Metro Police or Metro Manila. So, that’s the advantage because in Metro Manila, it is where a lot of insurance company situated, so we are unique because we are situated in the Southern part in the Philippines. 

At present in our area, we have a very minimal infected of the coronavirus, the area of the Luzon is where the epicentre of this COVID-19 or C-19. Then next slide, please. With this new normal, everybody don’t know what happened next because, we just heard from the major news in the Philippines that the Philippines declared the whole Philippines to be in lockdown, effective March eight. So, what we were doing was to convey our board of directors what we’re going to do. 

Because, part of it is March and April, especially those months, we usually conduct our general assembly. So, part of that is how to inform our shareholders that we’ll be going to postponed the assembly. And that is one of the requirement here in the Philippines, that every year you should come up with your assembly to be that all members will join an approval of all the reports. So with that, we try to stay normal. We stay connected with our members. 

We conducted our corporate chat with our corp leaders where we try to see our co-op members through Zoom. And situating also in the Philippines that technology is also a challenge, compared with other advanced countries. 

It’s very challenging, but however, we are able to come up with a lot of co-op leaders who also shared what they’re doing and they are asking for what will happen on their policies, especially if there are some claims. So, right on there we decided to come up with extension of our advice or extension of our policy holders in terms of maturity and claims that we process, our office is still open because it’s here in Mindanao, and the transportation related to passenger, but the mailing and other logistics are not yet closed, so we assured them that we can process their claims. 

We also set up claims fund to our co-op’s accounts or corporate accounts, which have a lot of policy holders. And second thing also that we discuss on our internal chat since Philippines is an archipelago. So we set up three internal chat or workable corporate meeting. We did Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, so that we can really get a specific advices or updates for our co-op members. So, one of the results there is to get confidence not build confidence of our policy holders and co-op leaders that we stand within what we promised. 

We also presented them about the status of the corporative insurances, we will not be conducting a general assembly. So we presented to them our financial statement or other reports, because at the time, it’s all for distribution. So, we extended also the renewal of our policy. So we assured them that even though it’s not yet renewed, as long as within fall on March eight up to two months, we consider that it’s still active policy. So enforced policy.  

On the part of that is the advisory. We come up with a lot of advisories in our website and even takes brigade to inform our co-ops how we can help the government also related to safety measures, and also come up with activating our business continuity plan that we already in placed. And since the CLIMBS Institute of Management is very aggressive also in our partnership with other co-ops, so we will easily to convey our co-op about setting up their own also continuity to develop the continuity plan. 

We issue also some hotlines and disseminate it through social media channels and sales team accounts of officers. And related to our accounts because at the time, the centre really which was locked down was the Metro Manila. And the beauty that we have in CLIMBS, this is very different with other businesses because, it’s the business mix that we have. 50% comes from the southern party, especially in Mindanao, because they’re three major islands in the Philippines. 

The second is in Visayas and third only is in Luzon. So, those are policies that fail about the COVID-19. It’s more on the Luzon area. And however, we did not stop on the aside from the business continuity plan. We set up also our task force for COVID-19 for our employees because, we want to know and determine among the employees that we have and even agents. We have around almost 200 employees, organic, and more than 300 plus micro agents among our distribution channel of the Copa student centre. 

We were able to track them, especially if they are families who have some difficulty on assessing about basic needs. So in tandem with our CLIMBS CARES, this is now the Community Action Response to Emergency Services or CARES, we were able to assist them by some of our Community Development Fund. The beauty in the Philippines, the corporate team in the Philippines, the government is very strict on the allotment of 3% of the net income or the net surplus. So we allocated 3% that this a mandatory to provide the social tool to spend the Community Development Fund or the CDF. 

In the CDF, we identify hospitals, one in Luzon and Visayas and Mindanao, and set up almost $2 million so that we can buy the PPEs the Personal Protective Equipment’s, and also come up also with our help to our co-ops not related to adapt the hospitals or adapt the hospital program. So we partner with primary co-ops and then we give them that our budget is this much of 500,000 pesos in that area, how can paramedical ops also support, so that we can have … It will be a bigger amount to support the hospitals, the front liners. 

Aside from that, all employees of CLIMBS, about 200, we also adapt 10 families 10 families, so that we can give them food packs. That is where we spend our Community Development Fund. Then other thing also is things in Mindanao, we have a problem on water or sanitation. So we continue giving portable drinking water, since we also have a fire truck next slide, please. So this is our Adopt the hospital. We have a political operative pledge that states, “Alone I am weak, but with others, I am strong.” 

We asked cooperative solidarity. We are calling our co-op members since we have 4,000 co-op members, co-primary co-ops. So we asked them how we can support our community. So we go first on our front liners, the hospital and the next is the neighbours and also the cooperative members. So around $40,000 that we committed to fund this program within our Community Development Fund. Next slides please. Next slides. So, this is the Caring For Others. We are more than just what that shows basically CLIMBS is not about premiums and numbers on how premium that will be adapted, but we are more focused also on how we can help those who are in need, and those who are not co-op members. 

So, it’s still not ongoing, and the challenge right now is how we can continue operating like this since the numbers in COVID-19 is still rising in the Philippines. We are into number 39. 39 as I said, around 30,000 infected. And we had an average of around 500 persons per day, we’ve added to the statistics. So, working this kind of pandemic is very challenging. And in the office, we are now into full staffing. We implemented around 30, 40 people or 50% of our sales force. 

Also our head office has been forced on. Some of them are into work for home and about our sales, we develop really a program like online, online selling. We are now into developing our digital platform, like the apps, the Insurtech apps, and what bring this pandemic is we really have to embrace technology even though our community, our corporate team here is not that accept that, because they said it’s better manual or IBM, but because there’s no choice, so this is what we are doing, the development of our digital platform.  

We support that, developing a COVID-19 protection for emergency products. So we have a line, three products already subject for the government approval, like in the loan insurance, which part of the big chunk of our insurance business, we try to come up with hospitalization, hospital income benefit and relate that also for medical check-up. So, we will just add on a little premium. And then we also partner with a telemedicine which are co-op members that have some difficulty to physically going to the hospital. 

We add on a product of telemedicine so that our co-op members can just dial through their phones and then they can also access what specific doctor advice or prescribing prescriptions. Other thing also is we develop through this COPE product, the COVID-19 Protection for Emergency Product. We develop also a GYRD product that will be part also of medical checkup. Then, we always come up with our co-op values, creation and establishment of the Business Continuity Plan and disaster preparedness in COVID-19 environment. 

This is very challenging because in sustaining this program, we need a partner and that partner is the corporative primary co-ops. So we try to develop how we can help the government also especially in other localities, not only on where we situated, and Philippines has considered us a calamity or ring of fire. We have around eight or nine, that will cross around the archipelago. And even last month we have one typhoon that affected Visaya area in the middle of the Philippines. 

It’s very challenging how to go forward. And rest assured that in terms of this C-19 or pandemic 19, the risk management program should be in placed. So of now we are calling for all sectors, not related to public or private because, having this scenario where we think that without the vaccine or without the proper anti vaccine for this COVID-19, what we believe is for that coming next month, a few months from now, the Philippines is number one exporter of the OFWs and then around 25 million OFWs will be arriving. 

One of the concerns is how to continue their livelihoods. So, we are partnering with the government on the development of the micro, small and medium enterprises, so that we will be giving them also some programs in partnership with our CLIMBS Institute of Management, and then build community resilience by initiating and supporting programs through our Community Development Fund. So I think that’s what we are doing right now and thank you very much for giving us the opportunity again, for presenting also what we are doing here in the Philippines, especially our corporate team movement. To all our co-op members, I’m very thankful for optimizing your corporative insurance CLIMBS. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you Noel that was a great overview of a very comprehensive program that CLIMBS has implemented to not just helping employees, but also help local communities in your cooperative members. I’ve got a few questions, but I think I’ll save those for the end, because I think that they’re questions that the others can contribute to, and from New Zealand to the Philippines, we’re going to head back down to Australia. 

And we’re delighted that Melina Morrison is joining us today. Melina is CEO of the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals. Melina is giving an overview of how the sector has responded in Australia. Melina, over to you. 

Melina Morrison: 

Thank you very much, Ben. And thank you ICMIF and AOA for this opportunity to join in the webinar today to discuss how we’re responding across Asia and Oceania. Just listening to Martin and Noel, I’d like to pay some respect first of all, and congratulate you on your incredible efforts in relation to your members and your communities and your broader social networks. I wanted to reflect for a moment that really what I was hearing in Martin’s presentation and in Noel’s presentation is really the key to what I’d like to talk to you all about today. 

In the examples of business continuity and co-operatives solidarity that we’ve just heard, this is really … it speaks to an opportunity in this crisis. And that is for co-operatives and mutuals, a key actor in how we respond globally, not only to this pandemic, but other crises. It’s very true as we’ve heard this morning or today, whatever time it is, where you are that co-ops and mutuals do de-risk the economy. And they do that because they’re member owned and focused, and that’s the key driver in how they’re responding as businesses and as organizations to the pandemic. 

This is really something that can help broader economy, both nationally in our own national domains and internationally to respond to crisis. We do need co-operatives and mutuals. And we’re seeing in this pandemic that cooperation is really the way that communities have to respond as a behaviour, to surviving. In Australia, a slightly different presentation today because we’re a peak body for all co-operatives and mutuals across the Australian economy. There are 2,000 of those. 

We have 50 of the largest co-operatives and mutuals in different sectors, including insurance, indemnity and discretionary mutual membership. We’re very much the baby of the group today, so we are just seven years old being formed in 2013. Before I just talk about what we’ve done as a peak body to respond on behalf of our members and help them navigate the pandemic. I just wanted to give a quick overview of what the pandemic has looked like in Australia.  

Just very briefly in terms of how it’s looked in other regions, we’ve had relatively low impact, not as low as New Zealand but a relatively low number of fatalities, although one is too many high. But we’ve largely avoided some of the worst impacts by responding early and having a very strong public health system as well, but economically it has impacted the Australian economy. So, we have seen just as in other regions, huge drop in economic activity, particularly in areas like retail. 

A lot of Australian businesses, large and small have accessed a huge amount of economic government support in order to avoid the worst impacts. So the government response looked like this. This is all in Australian dollars. The biggest government assistance package has been in relation to jobs, and this is to keep people in jobs by providing a stimulus payment to employers to keep people on the payroll, whether they’re working their full hours or not. Our members being across the economy have been impacted in different ways, depending on what sector they’re in. 

Travel is obviously hugely impacted. Agriculture, being an Island nation relying on a lot of international export markets, the closure of air freight markets was very damaging. Although some of that has been remediated, so different members have been impacted. How have our cooperative and mutuals … how have they responded? So many variety of ways. I won’t go into too much detail because I think the two examples we’ve heard from our colleagues today just a great range of the ways that co-operatives and mutuals do respond to member need. 

We’ve seen a lot of redeploying of staff, so that people have not … we’ve seen very, very few business closures. So, one of the key things to point out, I think is that one way we’ve supported members is simply to stay open, to have consistent level of service level, for members is incredibly important to the continuity of the members’ businesses. And that’s all back to the member focus again. In some cases we’ve done a lot in the voluntary and volunteerism has been used a lot in redeploying staff, but also the other ways that we’ve supported such as cash flow support for small and medium enterprises that are members of co-operatives via early rebates, and treatment of debt when it comes to cooperative banks for example. 

I might just skip over the video for the moment, Ben Telfer, just because we’re running short of time, I’ll come back to that at the end, if we’ve got some time. So, I’ll just move forward. So, what have we done as the peak body, we’ve had three strategies, curating and disseminating the huge volume of COVID-19 information, particularly to help businesses keep going, keep doors open, but also access government assistance has been really important. So this is how we’ve supported our members to support them in this, if you like. Secondly, we’ve represented the sector as whole sector. 

So, we’ve had member-owned businesses being at the table with other peak business bodies, so that the voice of co-operatives and mutuals has been represented at the highest level. And this has been really important in ensuring that all of the government policies and responses, do also work for co-operatives and mutuals. Without the voice at the table, the member owned sector often misses out, simply by omission. And the third way we’ve helped members is through direct actions and interventions. 

One slide I showed earlier showed some lovely Western Rock Lobster on its way to be exported out of Australia. So we help provide advocacy to open up air freight routes for agriculture, as one example of direct intervention on behalf of our member businesses. One of the simplest things we’ve done, has really been around information sharing and at the height of the COVID pandemic, we were putting out a newsletter regularly. It’s now gone to once a week. 

This simple sharing of information in the inbox of all of our members at 9:00 AM every morning was a way of curating the huge volume of information for them. We’ve also used our member network cooperation amongst co-operatives to try and share the information and resources within our own sector. We’ve created a series of videos to help members find advice and expertise to help them with their businesses. It might’ve been advice around risk and insurance in a pandemic for example, which we encourage them to get from other co-operatives and mutuals. 

We have kept the voice of the cooperative and mutual sector at the political table. And these are just a few screen grabs because most of this advocacy work has had to happen online in a digital environment. But what’s been really important was to make sure that co-operatives and mutuals were always considered by government when they were coming up with policies. And finally, we’ve had to pivot our business. Being a peak body, we are primarily about meetings, forums and activities, which largely were face to face before the pandemic. 

So with very little digital infrastructure investment available, we have pivoted to as much of our activity program to being online. And in fact, it’s opened up access to members who may not have attended face to face because of the tyranny of distance or the cost. So in fact, what has been a challenge has turned into an opportunity. We’ve managed to pivot all of our major flagship projects. One is a big project that we were funded by the federal government before the pandemic to deliver information on co-operatives to farmers in Australia, we’ve taken it all online. 

So we’ve tried not to cancel anything, but rather to pivot it or to put it forward to a later date. And it’s been really, really important for us to use social media channels. We’ve used LinkedIn a lot. In fact we set up a COVID-19 page where we use members networking with each other to the best advantage, and we have a members app, and we communicate through these digital functions. Finally, I just wanted to leave with this thought and back to what I said at the beginning, the crisis we believe, really provides a once in a generation opportunity to reset the economy, the wider economy in a positive frame. 

We believe it’s time to pause and decide what types of economy and society we want to create. And there are opportunities for the cooperative and mutual sector for us to assert our role, the wonderful things that you are all doing in helping to build future prosperity. What you are demonstrating in your relationships to your own members is what we need to do economy wide. In Australia, politicians in particular are looking to businesses that put people first and demonstrate care for the community. 

To leverage this we’ve launched two initiatives. One is, to write a blueprint, which is our sector’s advice to the government on how to rebound and recover from the pandemic. Our restart plan using co-operatives and mutual models. And the second initiative is that we have launched a resilience report, which is a deep dive analysis of how our members and the wider cooperative and mutual sector responded to the pandemic in order to build the evidence and point to the track record of how co-operatives and mutuals worked on behalf of their members and their communities throughout the crisis, so that politicians and the broader community really get a first-hand look and gain an appreciation for the important role that co-operatives and mutuals play in making sure that we have an economy that can respond to all types of crises. 

I think I might leave it there. I do have a video, perhaps we can share it later, which is one example of how one part of our sector, the Credit Union Movement in Australia has responded to this opportunity, to show how we’ve been innovative and responded for communities from the very beginnings, the very foundation stories of co-operatives and mutuals. And they’re taking this moment to remind people that the way that we’ve behaved in the past is the way that we are behaving for our communities now. And it’s just a terrific short little social media campaign, but I’ll leave it there and we can share the link. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you very much, Melina, it is a really great video, so yes, we’ll be sure to share the link with you. Thank you very much for sharing some inspirational stories and programs coming from Australia. And as ICMIF and the AOI are very similar to BCCM as we have member companies that are mutual and co-operatives, we can certainly agree with some of your statements about how you’re very proud of the response from your members, and also the challenges and also the opportunities to connect members in a different way, and also some new opportunities going forward. 

We do have a few questions in, which we can ask all three speakers. I will pose these questions to Martin, Noel and Melina.

First question that Martin and those sorts of touched on, you mentioned about the crisis response and how you’ve also had learnings from say earthquakes or past disasters. Do you think that being located in countries where you are more prone to these natural disasters, it’s helped in your response dealing with this crisis? Martin, perhaps I go to you first for that one. 

Martin Stokes: 

Yeah, it’s a really good question, Ben. I think these natural disasters are more regional in nature. So there’s a combination of domestic response and backed up, I must say by global support in the case of the Canterbury earthquakes. But where these are different is, we’re re-insurance and government jointly, we’re able to fashion a very effective response to the Canterbury earthquakes for example, with the rebuild pouring billions of dollars literally back into the economy to replace what had been lost. 

We’re talking here about a global event which we’ll see unprecedented levels of reduction in our GDP. New Zealand is heavily reliant on tourism. It’s really hard to see, even if we are able to eradicate or eliminate the existence of the pandemic in this country, how we reactivate that industry. So there are some challenging times ahead which are unprecedented for us and people are turning to innovative ways to think about how we can support our local communities, there’s a strong push for domestic tourism. 

And hopefully in the near future, Melina is some opportunity to create a tourism bubble between the Australia, New Zealand and perhaps the Pacific Islanders as well. But these are certainly while there are parallels with what happened with those events in the past, Canterbury earthquakes as an example, largely these are unprecedented as to scale and uncertainty too about the future. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you, Martin. Noel anything to add on that in terms of the crisis management in the Philippines? 

Noel Raboy: 

Yes it helps because Philippines, we have around 80 plus stipends that will pass. We are just looking at this as part of life. However this type of pandemic is a very different one because we are separating families, and then we don’t know what to do because, since our economy is still developing, and then most of our co-ops are also into financial, more focused on the loan, are more focused on the credit unions. 

One realization that for me is about, I think co-ops in the Philippines should come up on some value chain food-related businesses, so that we’ll not be dependent more on imports or exports. And other thing also is, we are very resilient as a country, but looking into the behaviour of the Filipinos considering the social distancing and some other health precautionary measures. So, moving around and we have close family ties values. So, very difficult to manage. 

If you look into the statistics right now, the cases is still high, because there’s now a fatigue on say at home. There’s a fatigue also that some of our people here are looking that they will not die because of these pandemic of COVID-19 they will because of hunger. And if you heard some news the locally stranded individuals and the turning off the police, those are a very challenging part of the government. So I think co-ops has this . We can help. 

This is where cooperativism will come in and strengthen also on issues on mental health, because that will be the effect of this pandemic. 

Ben Telfer: 

Excellent point, Noel. I know Martin spoke about a lot of the things that MAS are doing around the mental health of their employees and also their members. I think we’ve got one time for one final question. It’s a really great question. Everybody’s covered it in some way, but perhaps it’s something that you can just sum up.  

So the question is, how have your values as a mutual cooperative or member of business, impacted your response? And have you seen a difference to other insurers, shareholder owned insurers, and how other companies in the market have responded? Melina, perhaps I’ll come to you first for that one, to see how your members are sponsoring your members compared to other shareholder companies. 

Melina Morrison: 

Well, just in summary, I think it’s a very, very important question, but I’d put it this way. How has our business model responded? Our values are encapsulated. They’re part of the DNA of the business model of member–owned businesses. And this is something that we feel very strongly about. This opportunity that I touched on before. Now is the time for the cooperative and mutual business model to assert itself, to show that it’s in having a focus on profit making rather than profit maximization. 

Using money to do something rather than doing something to make money that can really make the difference. So that it goes beyond values. It’s not just a feel-good factor. It’s not just because we are good people, it’s actually because the business model suits being able to respond to community need. 

Ben Telfer: 

An excellent point, Melina. Martin how about your perspective on that? 

Martin Stokes: 

Thanks, Ben. I think of everything that Melina has said, I guess, tangibly from our perspective, couple of things I know one, is how supportive our board was and how easy they were to approach for levels of support and breadth of support for which there really were no precedence. So, they would just easily able to agree to not only financial assistance and support, but ranges of broader levels of support, which would risks, I guess in a more holistic way the impact that we knew was happening within our membership community, whether that was mental welfare, the welfare of families. 

Importantly, from our perspective, doing anything we could to make sure that they could maintain their cover, whether it was fire in general or life cover or also the wealth that they were accumulating for retirement. So we found that particularly easy to do. And I think as I touched on before, as we’re evolving our thinking about our purposes in organization beyond what say 10 years ago we simplistically thought about as just simply here to serve our members and now understanding that we are not alongside a community, we are part of a community, and understanding how between ourselves and our members, using our scale and the professional skills that we have within our customer base, we can actually have a positive impact on the community and having the first real chance to test that, has been not only exciting for us, but it’s made us think about our relationship with all of our stakeholders. 

Our customers, our staff, our suppliers, our business partners, and potentially just a really exciting different way to think about our role. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you, Martin. Noel, any last comments on that? 

Noel Raboy: 

I think it’s already said by Melina and Martina, and maybe I can add on, let’s go beyond, I think this is where co-operatives goes beyond number, let’s move on the alerts. Let’s put always on what social contract that we can give to our co-op members and all these organization that is also our responsibility to help and support through solidarity. 

Ben Telfer: 

An excellent comment to end. I think we’re going to have to close it there. Sorry that we couldn’t get to all the questions. I’d just like to thank Martin, Noel and Melina for joining us today, some inspirational stories, and it’s great to have your leadership within our sector. Thank you everybody for participating for joining us today. 

Also thank you to our co-hosts at the AOA webinar. I think Melina touched on it before about as a trade association, what we’d like to do is share information between our members, and you can read many more inspirational stories and case studies from what our other members in the AOA and other ICMIF members around the world have been doing in terms of responding to the pandemic.

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