Wang Wei

Chief Consultant, China – Rare Earth Insurance Partners

Photo: AP/Kin Cheung

This week we are seeing some insurers resuming full operation in selected cities in China, which is set to continue to gain momentum, as is the return to work for businesses across a wide range of industry sectors in Hong Kong. Fortunately, the Taiwan market has not been affected by the same level of shutdown as experienced on the Mainland and in Hong Kong.

Although it is too early to determine the full impact the coronavirus outbreak and its spread will have on organisations and the global economy at large, it is business—almost—as usual at Rare Earth Insurance Partners.

Rare Earth is an international company headquartered in Greater China, operating entirely in the cloud and therefore able to work remotely and across international time zones with very minimal business interruption. By embracing an efficient, collaborative work environment our business has continued pretty much as normal, even without the usual business travel and face-to-face meetings.

Top-level conversations and most day-to-day negotiations have largely continued, albeit often more slowly than during normal periods. The difficulty comes when more traditional, paper-based processes need to come into play, such as the physical sign-off of documents and, frequently, the movement of funds through the banking system.

We have been able to minimise the impact of that through Rare Earth’s technology offering, WorkSpace. WorkSpace is a powerful tool in support of what is becoming known as “teleworking” on the Mainland, and will surely become the new normal in the post-coronavirus world.

It has always been our belief that you can’t capture emerging opportunities with antiquated systems, especially if you hope to serve a global client base. As early adopters of work-from-home practices, Rare Earth is also an advocate for the benefits of teleworking from its own positive experiences of working across a multinational platform while enhancing employee engagement and performance.

The coronavirus pandemic and its associated anxiety will end. But in the meantime, our team in China have adopted some innovative new practices to fill what otherwise might become an alarming void in the all-important social life of the market. “Teledrinking” via WeChat might be here to stay…