Local financial services companies have made contingency plans to address a widening outbreak of COVID-19, which include their employees being required to work remotely or from home.
Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), the nation’s largest financial services company by assets, last week moved some staff from Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) headquarters to other locations, spokesman Daniel Teng (鄧崇儀) told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
“We want to reduce the possibility of an internal large-scale contagion and cross-contamination by having people in the same department work in different locations,” Teng said.
The company would ask more employees, particularly those in its information technology (IT) and corporate planning departments, to work from home should the government confirm community-level transmission, he said.
Cathay Financial has prohibited its employees from making business trips to China, Hong Kong and Macau, and has demanded that they inform the company of any trips to other high-risk areas such as Japan, he said.
The company would continue to pay employees subject to quarantine measures, he added.
“If employees at one branch cannot work due to the outbreak, we will transfer staff from other branches to provide support. We cannot just shut down branches,” Teng said.
The company would aim to continue to provide all its services and would adjust its measures as necessary, he said.
CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控), Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) and Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) have implemented similar plans, the companies said.
“As the trading room and IT department are important to the company, we have divided traders working at headquarters into two groups and moved them to different locations. We plan to implement the same measure for the IT department,” CTBC spokeswoman Chiu Ya-ling (邱雅玲) said by telephone.
Shin Kong Financial, which is headquartered near Taipei Railway Station, has made a building in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) its second headquarters.
Many employees have moved to the Banciao District building, Shin Kong Financial senior vice president Sunny Hsu (徐順鋆) said, adding that the company has also canceled all face-to-face meetings and is holding videoconference calls instead.
The company said it would halt the operations of a branch to “completely disinfect the area,” if an employee was found to be infected or was placed under quarantine, while transferring healthy staff to other branches for a short period, Hsu said.
CTBC Financial has not made specific plans for affected branches, but would comply with Central Epidemic Command Center instructions, Chiu said.
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