Ace Sonbo Call Center COVID-19 Cluster Infection... Insurance Industry Busy with Emergency Response

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Hyung-gil] A cluster infection of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) occurred on the 10th at a call center of an insurance company in Seoul, putting the insurance industry on high alert.

Ace Insurance urgently closed the call center building located in Guro-gu, Seoul, and began disinfection work on the same day.

One call center employee (female in her 50s) was confirmed positive for COVID-19 on the 8th, and testing of colleagues the following day revealed that 27 more were infected. Among the confirmed cases, 17 live in Seoul and 11 in Incheon.

Financial companies have started reviewing their COVID-19 response measures and preparing accordingly.

Meritz Fire & Marine Insurance divided employees at its directly managed call centers in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, and Busan into 5 to 6 groups earlier this month to work in a dispersed manner. Employees who would normally be in the same space were assigned to different floors, and even those on the same floor were placed in separate areas in groups of a certain size. Interaction between separated groups was also discouraged.

Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance operates subsidiary call centers in six regions nationwide and maintains a floor-dispersed work system even under normal circumstances. Usually, one or two call center offices are located on a single floor, and within the offices, individual partitions are installed to separate workspaces and minimize contact.

DB Insurance, which has about 1,000 employees at call centers in Seoul, Anyang, Wonju, and Jeonju, equipped call center employees’ homes with environments that allow access to the headquarters’ call system and started a work-from-home system earlier this month.

Kyobo Life Insurance, operating call centers in Gangnam and Gangbuk districts of Seoul as well as Daegu, relocated employees from the Seoul Gangnam call center, which handles many customer requests, to the Gangbuk call center.

NH Nonghyup Life Insurance moved about one-quarter of its call center employees to other office spaces and plans to disperse up to 30% of employees if the situation worsens.

Hanwha Life Insurance enabled customer consultations through an automated response system (ARS) or mobile applications (apps), while Samsung Card uses chatbots for customer service tasks.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.