The coronavirus-induced lockdown has led to companies offering remote working facilities to employees.
The COVID-19 outbreak has led to companies across the country being forced to offer work-from-home facility for employees, life insurer PNB MetLife Insurance is looking at a possibility of offering remote working to 15-20 percent even after the situation normalises.
In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Ashish Kumar Srivastava, MD and CEO of PNB MetLife Insurance, said the company is working with the human resource, business continuity and communication teams to look into this possibility even in a normal scenario post the lockdown ends.
"We have employees who travel 1.5-2 hours one way to office. Right now, employees are allowed to work from home once a week. We are looking into whether some employees can be allowed to work-from-home atleast in some locations," he added.
PNB MetLife's employee strength was 10,444 employees including 6,077 full-time employees and 4367 part-time employees as on March 31, 2019.
As far as the business is concerned, Srivastava said the company is hoping that by June 2020, a few employees would be able to resume reporting to offices as and when required.
For the year ended March 31, 2020, PNB MetLife saw a 5.75 percent year-on-year growth in its first year premium to Rs 1,778.63 crore. However for the month of April 2020, the life insurer saw a 39.64 percent drop in premium collection to Rs 43.80 crore compared to the year-ago period.
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From a distribution perspective, Srivastava said the company will be leveraging the digital channels as well as its bank network.
"Punjab National Bank has 70,000 employees. We are connecting with these individuals as to whether they need a life cover. Through them we are also trying to connect with their friends, family and bank customers to look into the life insurance needs of such people," he added.
Apart from PNB, the life insurer also has bank partners like Jammu & Kashmir Bank, Karnataka Bank, ESAF Small Finance Bank among others.
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