To the business leaders shaken up by the COVID-19 pandemic, here’s a piece of wisdom from a CEO of a large insurance firm: Focus on what your customer needs, and what your company stands for, so you don’t lose sight of your goals amid this global crisis.
That’s the mindset of Manulife Philippines CEO Richard Bates, who has had quite an eventful first year since his move to the country. Apart from the typical natural disasters Filipinos have become used to (i.e., typhoons), the Taal Volcano eruption, and, now, the pandemic, have tested how Bates runs the company, which has been in the Philippines for over a century.
“It could be a different issue—what’s important is how you navigate through it,” Bates says. “The reality is, as a leader, you need to be able to face these challenges and respond to them by making sure you keep focused on what the customer needs, your mission statement and what you stand for—and make sure you don’t deviate from that.”
For Manulife, the focus for the past two to three years, says Bates, has been the development of their digital tech systems, many of which are working “behind the scenes” and have enhanced customer experience.
The payoff was Manulife’s seamless adjustment to a remote working/ work-from-home setup since the enhanced community quarantine was first implemented. “From Day 1 [of the lockdown], we were able to 100-percent service our customers through phone calls, emails, to make claims, collect premiums, make new policies and new business—and that was within 24 hours,” he says. “Again, that was due to our investment in our backend systems and processes. That I wasn’t worried about—we had already been tested by the Taal Volcano [eruption]. It was a very smooth transition for us.”
Manulife Philippines president and CEO Richard Bates
All this was done, of course, while keeping everyone’s the No. 1 priority, Bates adds.
“My initial response was, genuinely, concern for my people—concern for our customers, concern for distribution partners, and concern for my staff within the corporate side. I always see them as three sides of a triangle, and that they need balance. So my first concern was making sure people were looked after. Immediately we had a tracking system so we would be able to track where the health and safety challenges were in the organization,” Bates says.
As quarantine measures were stretched, Manulife also became mindful of their community’s mental health. Tools were given to agents so they could continue earning a living; on the other hand, to alleviate customers’ financial burden, extended the grace period for premium payments. The company also chose to support two-wheel riders of various delivery services by providing over 80,000 of them with free insurance coverage at the height of the lockdown.
“By delivering essentials, they also help keep companies in business, and this insurance coverage was our way of recognizing our heroic front-liners and showing how we value the work they do,” Bates says.
And it’s this kind of community building that drives Manulife to keep doing the work that they do, in order for them to provide services that help their customers lead better, easier lives, especially amid the large-scale health crisis that will most likely persist for a couple more years.
“The heightened sense of need [to have insurance] is very much there. It is still an underserved market, but I think the Philippines is buying for the right reasons, and that’s what we’re here to encourage them to do,” Bates says. “We are continuing our digital journey, making it easier for customers to access our insurance, which means making it easier for them to manage what they already have, or to be able to purchase themselves. That means making the interface between our customers and distributors smoother and more seamless. It also means being able to focus on the more pressing needs such as health, protection, solutions that are relevant to them.”