The coronavirus pandemic has impacted us all in different ways – with businesses closing, children home from school and many people battling this terrible illness.
While it is easy to feel helpless during these unprecedented and uncertain times, we’ve challenged ourselves to find ways that CFC can support our employees, our customers and our community. I’ve outlined our commitments below.
Our staff
CFC is very fortunate to have a resilient business and to operate in a sector that - while not without its own challenges - can continue to trade while employees are working remotely. Some of our staff have found that their roles are limited while working from home, but we believe in keeping them engaged in the business, whether with their own teams or helping other teams.
We have committed that no staff will be made redundant or furloughed during the period of this crisis.
Our customers
The majority of CFC’s customers are small and medium sized businesses, which stand to be some of the hardest hit during this crisis. We understand that these trying times are causing unprecedented financial hardship, and we are offering affected customers additional flexibility:
- Policies can be cancelled at no cost if the business no longer requires cover
- Policies can be paused for those clients that have temporarily ceased to trade
- Premium payment terms are being extended for those clients who are in financial difficulty
- Policies can be extended on an emergency basis for customers who cannot issue renewal instructions
- The small business renewal process has been streamlined
- Our property coverage has been amended to cater for newly vacant property
We are also dealing with a number of customers who have claims relating to the Coronavirus. We are doing our very best to manage these claims as fast and as sensitively as possible and we appreciate that this is of paramount importance to our customers.
Our community
While CFC is headquartered in London, we have employees, partners and customers around the world whose communities have been affected by this pandemic. We are extending a helping hand to those communities through two initiatives:
First, we are offering access to CFC’s award-winning cyber incident response helpline free of charge for three months to non-CFC customers. Small and medium-sized businesses, particularly those working remotely for the first time, are exposed to new and increasing cyber threats. Our helpline will give them access to expert support if they believe they have suffered a cyber-attack or data breach. You can read more about this program here.
Second, we have established the CFC Coronavirus Hardship Fund which is making £250,000 available to assist our employees, customers and our wider community who have been severely affected by coronavirus.
We hope that these efforts will provide peace of mind and some relief to those that need it most.
Faithfully,
David Walsh, CEO