Earlier this week, Dutch ICMIF member Achmea announced that over 11,000 colleagues were working from home in order to keep the insurer’s operations running smoothly and to be there for their customers at this challenging time.

In a press release this week, Achmea noted that the impact of the coronavirus on the lives of more and more people is increasing. The spread leads to uncertainty and leaves no one untouched – privately and at work. They affirmed that they would do everything they can to help their ten million customers in the best possible way under these exceptional circumstances. The health and safety of both Achmea’s customers and employees are paramount, said the company.

Achmea says the company’s mission is to contribute to a healthy, safe and future-proof society. In times like this, its mission remains relevant. The company is at the heart of society and involved in the current crisis in several areas. The products and services of Centraal Beheer, Interpolis, Zilveren Kruis and Achmea’s other brands play a major role in the lives of customers. As a cooperative insurer, Achmea says it wants to do the best for its customers and focus on the best possible maintenance of services. The organisation is already taking many extra steps together to ensure this. The crisis management organisation is active along four workflows, with which Achmea is continuously monitoring and adjusting developments on several fronts.

Working from home fully operational

On Tuesday 17 March, more than 11,000 Achmea colleagues were working from home at the same time. The company’s IT infrastructure was performing satisfactorily at that time with this peak load and usage will be monitored closely.

Willem van Duin, Chairman of the Executive Board said: “Working at home on a large scale is not new to Achmea. As an employer, we were pioneers in the field of home and flexible working years ago. Nevertheless, it is very nice that we have the IT facilities and infrastructure to be able to organize this in such a short term. Although we also have to be realistic and have an eye for the understandable challenges that large-scale working from home also entails.”

Great motivation to keep the work going

“But even more than the good performance of our IT facilities, I am very positive about the great personal commitment of many Achmea colleagues. There is great motivation from all over the company to keep the work going, during the day and sometimes even at night. In these difficult circumstances it is good to see that we are joining forces. I am thinking, for example, of the innovative way in which employees are now dealing with claims handling or how we organize virtual agile meetings of more than sixty colleagues at a time,” said Van Duin.

Finally, he added a few words to acknowledge that the coming period will not be easy and the uncertainty will certainly continue for some time saying: “We will follow the instructions from the government and RIVM (the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) closely and, of course, immediately adjust our measures if necessary. There are different scenarios and it is impossible to predict how long this situation will last. What is certain is that our customers can count on us to help them as best we can in these special circumstances.”