Dear PEAK Advisors,
The last 72 hours have been amongst the most turbulent we have ever seen. Last Thursday, markets recorded dizzying losses. The following day, we experienced record gains. While this was going on, borders were closing, countries announced emergency measures, and the COVID-19 pandemic is marching along at an alarming rate.
These are incredibly unique circumstances. As a result, we must also consider unique and unusual actions. The following is a summary of the actions we have taken over the last week, following the setup of our Emergency Response Team.
Our priorities begin with the health of our 120 employees. Without this, none of our next priorities are achievable. Our actions included:
- Providing all employees with the opportunity and tools to work from home.
- Requiring that all employees with flu symptoms remain home and see a doctor.
- Posting best practices to keep our offices clean.
- Requiring that all employees coming from outside the country remain home for 14 days.
- Cancelling all in-person meetings and business travel.
- Providing employees access to support and counselling where needed.
Our second priority is ensuring the support and well-being of our 1500 Financial Advisors and support staff. Our focus is ensuring there is no interruption in our services to them. In the last week, and in particular this weekend, we did the following:
- Conducted tests of all our processes offsite. In fact, we succeeded in holding a Zoom video conference with 118 employees online this afternoon, complete with a Q&A session. We will be holding daily online employee meetings starting tomorrow.
- Every employee was provided a portable personal computer and employees conducted connectivity tests.
- All employees are set up in chat rooms on WhatsApp with their work teams as well as company-wide chat and broadcast channels.
- Every employee now has video conference capabilities and tested their setup so that they can engage with their co-workers by video conference.
- A depository of procedures, best practices, and tools for Advisors is being set up.
- A relaunch of the PEAKAdvisor Forum, the PEAK Advisor community blog, is planned for later this week.
Third, we focused on the more than 150,000 clients that deal with our Advisors. Our teams worked particularly diligently to ensure that all year end statements, tax reports, and current statements are updated and verified.
We recognize the importance clients place on timely execution of their transactions and accurate reporting, especially at times like this.
Next we reviewed our work with regulators and government agencies. Several of us were in contact with the regulators and I had exchanges with leaders at the regulatory bodies, governments, and contacts around the world so as to better understand our regulatory obligations and our role to support the markets.
And finally, we have a role to play in society in general. We need to do our share to ensure social distancing is effective and the growth rate of the virus infection is slowed down. To achieve this, we will be moving to a completely remote workforce over the next 72 hours.
All employees will be working from home and we will be achieving 100% compliance with the best practices of the World Health Organization, and as requested by our country’s leaders.
We will need your help to succeed in each of these areas. This will require some adaptation for the processes that are still paper-based or that require a physical presence. We will be providing you with details on these processes in the next day.
We also ask that you review your own office and business processes with an eye to achieving excellence in each of the priorities above. We remain available to support you any way we can in all of these.
I am incredibly proud of the work our Emergency Response Team, under the leadership of our interim COO Erika Fernandez. The team, made up of our senior management team and several key employees, has achieved so much in a short time.
Truly, I am amazed, but not surprised at how each employee has pushed and continues to push their limits in learning and progressing by the hour. I am confident that we will not only achieve all our goals, we will also come out of this crisis much stronger and better.
Until then I remain committed, around the clock, to do all I can to support you in your work. These are extraordinary times for your clients too, and, as always, they are very fortunate to have dedicated planners like you to accompany them through these trying events.
Like you, I wonder what Monday morning and the next week will bring us. But I know that whatever it is, the PEAK community will deal with it with resolve and humility.
Warm regards,
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