No ‘business as normal’ until vaccine, says broker

With most restrictions eased and the majority of businesses operating again, the New Zealand economy has been put on the road to recovery sooner than many others – and, according to one broker, it has been good to see the country successfully doing “the hard yards” early.

One Hamilton-based broker, who preferred to remain anonymous, says that while there will undoubtedly be debate around the government’s decisions, it’s hard to tell how things may have turned out if a different approach had been taken. She says the focus now must be to get the economy moving again, and to create a safe and sustainable “new normal.”

“It’s really hard to give a comparison to ‘what might have been’ had they taken any other course, so I believe we just need to work with what we have,” she told Insurance Business.

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“While its terribly sad that we have had a number of deaths from COVID-19, it’s really pleasing to see that, as a country overall, we did the hard yards and are now out of lockdown and able to get the economy going again.”

“We’ve actually really embraced this as a forced ‘experiment’ in working from home and have been pleasantly surprised and pleased with the results,” she added.

“Staff engagement and productivity remained high throughout and our hardware and software performed well. As a result, we’ll likely be a lot more flexible with working from home in the months and years to come.”

When it comes to business, the broker says that her brokerage has not lost clients - in fact, it has been writing new clients throughout the pandemic. However, she says the way of doing business will undoubtedly be changed for the medium to long term, as international travel does not look set to resume for the foreseeable future.

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“Until the world has a vaccine and all borders are open and travel resumes, I believe we’ll continue to experience a very different face of business,” she explained.

“Financially things will be tighter in terms of both income and expenditure, and also just the morale of staff, who won’t necessarily have overseas travel to look forward to.”