How has Covid impacted your sector and has it had any long-term consequences?

Thank you for this great question Jackie! COVID has its pros and cons. If we talk about the insurance sector as a whole in our country, the most negative impact in my perspective would be the affected employment of people and the business performance. But if we focus on the positive things, I'd say there's a lot because it became a turning point for all and for our Company, it was experiential.

The impact of the pandemic became a positive trigger for us to bring the game to the next level. For the organization, the focus on work well became much stronger. It wasn't easy at first but it helped us be more innovative and progressive in making sure that our employees are engaged even if we are apart, while making sure everyone is safe with their families and loved ones in this period. We've invested heavily on infrastructure to make work from home possible and seamless for everyone in the company but at the same time ensuring optimal productivity is met. It was also a moment of opportunity to explore and further activate digitalization in terms of usage and projects. The importance of health and well-being became more important than ever which resulted to various implementations to make sure our employees are in a healthy state and that they are able to be productive while maintaining work-life balance. With all of these mentioned the long-term consequence is the result of these and other initiatives we have launched due to the pandemic and I wish to call it "healthy flexibility". We were able to prove that in this situation our Company can continue to perform in this kind of situation with happy and healthy employees! Perhaps my favorite part of this consequence is that we have implemented Work-From-Anywhere in our country and our mental health initiatives that helped promote more awareness on mental health! All of this aligns to the "New Work Model" strategy of Allianz which promotes various actions and methodologies on new ways of working.

For the business and the insurance industry as whole, I'd say the most positive impact of this pandemic period is the people's realization on the importance of insurance and that is primarily due to the situations imparted by COVID. This helped influence higher rate of availment from clients and even more involvement of insurance companies in the health space.