Cyber criminals often take advantage of major global events and under current COVID19 pandemic conditions, the risk to our digital assets is even greater. This is where Security Operations Centers (SOCs) become critical for a organizations, as they are one defending our digital landscape and are working harder than ever trying to contain and remediate increased number of Cyber threats.

• Spurt in cyberattacks on personal computers since ‘work from home’ began
• Security breaches have increased by 11% since Jan 2020
• 34% of data breaches are involving internal actors due to remote working
• 10 fold increase in Phishing levels
• Most malicious domains, about 60%, are associated with COVID-19
• Organizations experiencing difficulties in remediating security incidents

NIIT Tech’s Next-Gen SOC Services

NIIT Tech is committed to help you in times like this. NIIT Tech’s Advanced SOC Services help up-level your security. Our services can help you perform Security Remediation for emerging security threats or you can enable 24×7 Security Monitoring of your critical infrastructure through our Advanced SOC platform – SIMP.

NIIT’s highly effective Next-Gen SOC combined with a top-notch investigation and remediation team, delivers services towards the following:

• A Next-Gen SOC with advanced capabilities to detect, monitoring and remediate threats in real time
• Augment resource capabilities to your SOC to help contain and remediate the threats

SIMP lifying IT Security

Threat Management – Our defence in Cyber kill chail

If you need an extended security team or the right strategy in place, our experts are available to help with the most pressing challenges related to addressing the Security operations for your critical IT infrastructure.

Phishing Simulation & Readiness service

The novel coronavirus is challenging organizations on all fronts. CIO’s are at the center of an organization’s strategy to mitigate the risk and to keep the business running. As the threat of coronavirus continues to spread, businesses are sending employees home to work remotely, but with the social distancing comes a new threat – a cyber-related one.

Hackers appear to be targeting the most vulnerable i.e. the employees working remotely. As companies across the globe come to grips with this new normal, hackers are tweaking their attacks – sending phishing emails that claim to be about the coronavirus or purport to be from a trusted health agency – to leverage the fear of the global pandemic.

• Coronavirus-themed attacks are dominating the threat landscape in an unprecedented way.
• Cybercriminals are leveraging COVID -19 fears to trick users, spread malware, and pilfer data
• Endpoint Security partners are reporting over half million different type of messages, over a quarter million malicious URLs and hundreds of thousands of attachments with Coronavirus themes.
• These attacks and campaigns are global in scope.

NIIT Tech’s Phishing Simulation & Readiness Services

NIIT Tech is committed to help you in times like this. NIIT Tech’s Phishing Simulation & Readiness Services help up-level your security and prepare your end–users.

Our services help improve Remote Employee Security and awareness during The COVID-19 pandemic, in return improve your organizations security posture. Our services under this program helps you to educate your staff and make considerations for the following:

* Needs detailed analysis and discussion

All in one managed service that is quick in deployment and integrates with your mail and AD System.

• Phish Your Users: Fully automated simulated phishing attacks with verticalized & customized templates.
• Train Your Users: On-demand, interactive, engaging training with common traps, live hacking demos and new scenario-based Danger Zone exercises.
• Live Results: Centralized reporting to show stats and graphs for both training and phishing.
• O365 Security* : Secure O365 to reduce phishing emails and content.

John Speight, Head of Advisory at NIIT Technologies asks Gary McKay, Founder and CEO of APPII

Abstract

APPII is an online personal verification platform founded in 2016 by Gary McKay, Brian McNulty and Adi Ben-Ari.

APPII verifies identities, background checks (e.g. criminal record history) and career history (resumes) for job seekers providing organisations quick access to this pre-verified information.

The APPII platform provides customers with a configurable “software-as-a-service” platform that automates the pre-employment checking processes, reducing the time for background checks from weeks to minutes.

APPII has been working with companies in the Staffing and Recruitment industry such as the Impellam Group Plc and Techno-jobs, in the Education Industry with the likes of the Open University, NCFE and the Scottish Qualifications Authority, as well as collaboration with other large multinationals in the Oil & Energy and Financial Services industries.

Gary, can you give me some background on the partnership with NIIT Technologies?

NIIT Technologies has been the primary strategic partner of APPII since 2019, together we have been developing the APPII platform to enhance its personal verification and pre-employment screening capabilities and services.

APPII leverages the industry expertise of NIIT Technologies, as well as their software engineering capabilities, to accelerate the digital transformation of our clients’ HR, Talent Acquisition and Pre-Employment Screening services across heavily regulated markets (e.g. Travel, Health, Banking, Financial Services, Insurance).

What is your view on the current COVID-19 situation?

As at 1st April almost a third of the global population is on coronavirus lockdown with no definitive timeline as to when restrictions on citizens movement will be lifted. However, transition from this lockdown will need to occur for citizens and economies to return to business as usual.

The transition from the coronavirus lockdown will require careful management to stop, or at least minimise, the possibility of a further outbreak (2nd Wave) of the virus.

The question arises, how will governments facilitate an orderly transition out of lockdown, that enables employees, citizens and businesses to safely return to business as usual (BAU)?

How can governing bodies and employees mitigate the risks as lockdowns are relaxed?

It is suggested that employers and authorities will need a method of determining an individual’s health risk for employees and citizens to be permitted to move freely and therefore not pose a risk to themselves, their colleagues or the wider community.

Employers will need to determine which employees can resume normal working activities, based on their health status, in order to transition back to BAU. We see health status being determined in two ways.

• Self-Declaration
• Authorised Verification of Health (AVH)

Can you explain what you mean here and what the issues employers with face?

Self-Declaration is problematic in that it does not provide definitive proof for employers or authorities that the individual a) does not have the virus and therefore b) of minimal risk to themselves or others. However, self-declaration would enable employers to understand the current situation with their workforce and provide the required data for them to make tactical and strategic decisions on returning the workforce to the workplace.

There is also the opportunity for employers to develop personalised messages for employees given their health status. That is, if all employees register for a single service.

Authorised verification of an individual’s health status would need to come from a Registered Doctor or Government Health Authority. The key steps in the process would be:

• A robust identity verification process to ensure that the coronavirus status is issued to the correct individual.
• The registered authority associating the verified health status to the individual.
• Concise instructions from an employer or government authority as to what actions they can take (Permitted Post Lockdown Action) based on their health status

Can you explain what you mean here and what the issues employers with face?

The table below outlines the suggested categories of coronavirus status for an individual with examples of permitted post lockdown actions.

Can you explain how APPII and NIITTechnologies are working on a solution that helps to determine the health status of an individual.

APPII and NIIT Technologies have been working together to determine a solution to assist employers and government authorities facilitate an orderly and managed transition from the coronavirus lockdown.

The solution assists both individuals and organisations (e.g. police, employers or healthcare professionals) in determining whether an intended action by an individual is prudent or not.

Employers will be seeking to manage the transition of employees from the position of working from home back to the workplace. The method by which this occurs will require a concise framework as well as defined processes and procedures.

The solution will be very simple for employers to implement and for employees to understand. With APPII:

• Any building concierge will be able to install the APPII mobile app on their smartphone.
• Employees will be asked to show their APPII QR code to the concierge who will be able to determine whether the employees are permitted to enter the workplace.

Equally, employers will be able to directly message employees in any given category to outline the actions they need to take given their health status. This will be important where they need the employees to remain in isolation and working from home.

Those in authority will also be able to download the APPII mobile app on their smartphones.

They can ask individuals if they have a verified profile on APPII and seek temporary access to the individuals profile using their APPII QR code. This will be especially useful for the likes of the Police, Healthcare Professionals, Security Services and others that have rigorous requirements to inhibit the transmission of the virus in any given context.

Can you explain how APPII will help Customer Service Representatives working in the travel, leisure and entertainment industries?

Domestic and international travel has been heavily restricted due the virus and, in some cases, shutdown entirely.

It is suggested that countries will be seeking reassurance for those planning to check-in to travel that they are not going to put other passengers at risk given that they will be sitting near to each other. We foresee these restrictions in international travel remaining in place for some time with regulations, not unlike security checks, being undertaken to determine a traveller’s health status.

Customer Service Representatives at check-in could be equipped with APPII, thereby enabling them to check the health status of travellers prior to travel. Equally, travellers would be able to show their status to border control officers on arrival at their destination.

Public and entertainment facilities such as cinemas, leisure centres, gyms, and conference centres are also locations where large volumes of people gather in confined spaces. Managing social distancing at these venues is particularly challenging and it is therefore likely that health checks will also need to be performed by members of staff of customer service representatives when they reopen to the public.

So how could individuals use APPII to provide confirmation that they are clear?

Using APPII, individuals could:

• Biometrically verify themselves via the APPII mobile app
• Have their coronavirus status catalogued through Self-Declaration or via an Authorised Verifier.
• Thereby prove their health status using their APPII profile to those that require to see it.

And how would organisations use APPII?

Using APPII, Organizations could:

• Use the APPII mobile app to scan a QR code on the individual’s mobile app.
• The QR code temporarily loads the individuals verified photo ID document and their health status onto the smartphone of the checker.
• These Face-to-Face checks will catalogue
  • The date and time of the check
  • The individual that has performed the check
  • The location (Geo Long/Lat) of the check
  • Any notes taken by the party checking the individual’s status

So, what are the next steps for APPII and NIIT Technologies?

The primary service on the APPII platform is providing employers with the capability to request individuals perform pre-employment checks.

Individuals are also provided the capability to pre-verify their personal information (e.g. Verified Health Status) and therefore expedite the hiring process.

The NIIT Technology team have been instrumental in building out the pre-employment checking features for APPII and are currently focussed on delivering all the pre-employment checks required for the Banking and Financial Services industry – this should be complete in the upcoming weeks. APPII has received significant interest from organisations regarding the verified health status service. Regionalisation will almost certainly need to occur, and I expect that NIIT Technologies will play a pivotal role in building out regional capabilities as they are requested.

Deepak Dixit, Head of Process Excellence Advisory Practice at NIIT Technologies gives his views on how firms should prepare and execute

India’s $150 billion IT and Business Processing Outsourcing industry plays a crucial role for many businesses, however the providers of these services, be it captive operations and or service providers, have struggled to address the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As stated, the services provided are critical to the day-to-day activities of their clients and their failure to adapt to challenges could result in significant operational risk.

Customers are finding that their offshore providers are unable to adapt quickly to support them, why? Until recently, many of the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans were either theoretical, largely untested or had been tested under an artificial or “ideal” situation. These plans were not designed to cover a global pandemic situation wherein social distancing would result in the need for the entire workforce to work remotely or in very constrained conditions.

Many providers are constrained by the lockdown imposed by the Indian government in conjunction with lack of pro-active planning and subsequent preparedness. This has resulted in:

• Insufficient workforce to perform activities,
• Working with processes not suited to remote, distributed working,
• Lack of technology infrastructure required to support distributed working.

The issues are exacerbated by the manual nature of many services; this has led to a breakdown in the quality of service along with inability to handle volumes provided to their clients

Need to Minimise Risk and Impact of Disaster

The COVID19 pandemic has become a testing ground for many firms; clients are now seeing whether their providers have planned, upgraded and invested in a balanced way to have minimum risk and impact of any disaster. Successful execution of plans by providers helps their clients to reduce the level of disruption, and therefore enhance the ability to retain customers (i.e. retention is a risk that firms face due to disruption resulting in delays or availability of services).

As such, service providers and clients must address current issues and also learn from them. They need to review their ability to seamlessly run their business when such crisis occurs, to look from a people, process and technology perspective to ensure business operations can seamlessly switch to remote working.

NIIT Technologies believes that many firms will see major changes in client behaviour post COVID-19, we expect their attention, motivation, confidence and perception towards a provider will be impacted by the quality of service provided during the crisis.

On a positive note, we believe that firms that embrace ‘out -of-the-box’ ways of working that incorporate remote working and social distancing, that enable people to work in an environment that is safe, effective and easy to implement will be the winners. We believe that organizations will be forced to create omni working models that are easy and fast to implement, that enable employees to work anywhere and everywhere, connected through internet or telephone. Overtime, the thinking will move beyond the e-commerce towards the concept of “e-working”

Proof is in the pudding, so how did NIIT Technologies react to the crisis?

As the COVID-19 situation developed, NIIT technologies proactivity put in place emergency processes that focused on safety of employees and the delivery of services to our clients. This included full verification and testing of our ability to support closure of centres. The program was driven from the CEO office down, with key members of the executive tasked with driving our planning and preparations around the globe.

We proactively:

• Procured and allocated laptops, PC’s and internet connection to enable our teams to work from home without impacting business SLA’s.
• Sought all client approvals for BCP, to enable a shift to a “work-from-home” model.
• Enabled and tested the infrastructure to connect remotely to both the client & our environments using Citrix and VPN.
• Followed stringent information security management system policies and ensured that all the employees working from home had signed the “work from home policy”.
• Ensured compliance with all regulatory obligations (e.g. all data and information protection clauses).

This positioned NIIT Technology well to support our clients, to date we have successfully invoked remote working across our workforce as part of our

BCP, we have ensured no impact on clients to whom we provide operations services; no drop or breach in any client KPI/SLA nor drop in any other quality metric. This has been achieved whilst also handling increased demands.

In one case, a client for whom we provided a frontline service desk had not signed up to any form of BCP, however we invested to ensure that over 100 service desk personnel could operate effectively from home. After successfully performing a pilot test with 5 resources we rolled out the environment in days to support full team, thereby enabling continuation of 24 by 7 support coverage with no downtime. The plan incorporated provision of configured laptops, remote access to client’s VPN, hourly reporting with clients, configuration and validation of all data and cyber-security measures, adaption of policies and processes etc. Last but not least, we took appropriate approvals from the Indian Government Department of Telecommunication so that we could seamlessly re-route customer calls to employee mobile phones, thereby enabling us to support significantly higher call volumes.

Proactiveness and preparedness are key to handle such scenarios. Preparedness is always coupled with right set of people, standardized & well-defined processes and up to date technology.

NIIT Technologies has been able to cope with such disaster effectively because of its meticulous management & support culture. Our robust frameworks such as ProcessGym have enabled us to provide a streamlined, well defined set of operational processes backed up with quality measures; on which we apply continuous improvement, automation, automations and usage of latest & up to date technology has contributed to enable us to implement a “work from home” model with minimum issues and no disruption on client’s requirements.

COVID is a disaster that none of us would ever want to go through again however, it has reminded us to be prepared for the worst. Charles Darwin theory “Survival of the fittest” is best suited before, during and after such scenarios.

The next step is to be proactive and prepared once COVID19 is over, be pro-active and make sure you chose a service provider who can support you through times of crisis.

View from NIIT Technologies, Financial Services Advisory Team Joseph Mendel and Babita Wadhwa

The impact of COVID-19 on the financial services business is seismic. While other industries such as the Travel, Transportation, Hospitality, Insurance, Retail, and Telco are severely impacted it is the resiliency and continuity of the financial services markets that will support Governments and businesses during and post crisis; ensuring liquidity is available. All eyes will be tuned to the financial services industry to see if they can respond in a manner that reduces the global economic impact of COVID-19.

In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Prudential Regulation Authority and HM Treasury recommended precautions, such as social distancing, to minimize the spread of coronavirus in a March 25th website statement to their members. FINRA member firms in a March guidance (Memo 20-01) were “encouraged to review their BCPs to consider pandemic preparedness, including whether the BCPs are sufficiently flexible to address a wide range of possible effects in the event of a pandemic in the United States. These effects may include staff absenteeism, use of remote offices or telework arrangements, travel or transportation limitations and technology interruptions or slowdowns”. FINRA also said on March 3rd, that “banks might need to alter policies for supervising traders who are relocated to remote offices or working from home because of the spreading virus”.

NIIT believes this is the new post COVID-19 model, where firms embrace technology that enables them to adopt the new operating model, being compliant while conducting business-as-usual in a not so usual world.

How can the financial services market best rise to the challenge?

As the financial ecosystem is in uncharted territory and the situation is evolving every day, it is imperative that financial service organizations be flexible, agile, transparent and act decisively in response to the challenges that COVID-19 has posed. It is an operating model far beyond normal business continuity planning that walks a fine line of balance between remaining fiscally solvent, regulatorily compliant, humanly true to the “banking mission” while also minimizing the impact on employees and customers, and promoting efforts to limit the spread of the virus. NIIT feels that banks have the duty of having to react in the best interests of promoting their own solvency, providing for customers, and, maintaining the stage for a viable financial economic recovery.

Where does the rubber hit the road with this delicate balance?

In the US the Fed has cut Fed Funds rates and pumped in excess of $1.5 Trillion into liquidity relief for banks to keep them viable. Other central banks including the European Central Bank have infused liquidity in similar ways, but ultimately consumers will only care about how this affect them. We feel that this consumer sentiment will be a key indicator of which financial service organizations emerge with a strong future.

We anticipate that financial consumers will:

• Want to know when and if banks will be offering extension of credit terms, credit holidays, forbearance, socially-distanced branch access, remote account opening and onboarding, document execution, remote trading and settlement, and more to help them financially survive the lock downs. Conversely, we also believe that most financial services organizations will experience and prepare for:
• Consumer cash flow pressures, covenant breaches, increased provisioning, reputational risk, falling investment demand and a move to cash equivalent holdings as rates decline.

Banks will have to comply, without knowing the ultimate profit and loss and balance sheet consequences, in a way that allows them to react to events and drive everything through the lens of what can help the customers and be allow them to be sustainable.

NIIT feels that operationalizing this delicate balance is a primary key to success and one of the most important criteria in restoring the overall health of the financial ecosystem.

Banks have been working hard since 2008 to regain the trust and confidence of the consumer, so how they approach the COVID-19 crisis and work through it, will go a long way to re-establishing that trust.

In that case, what is the prescription for a sound recovery?

NIIT Technologies believes that following areas of focus are important foundational themes that are rapidly becoming the new business-as-usual standard practices:

Accept That There is a New Operating Model: By default, the old ways of conducting business-as-usual have expired.

The use of technology to enable work to continue without physical proximity will be essential to all industries. But for financial services, the ability to securely conduct business outside the normal firewalls and not within protected sealed off areas will be critical. Compliance restrictions for certain highly regulated activities such as trading will be handled through innovative solutions e.g. multi-channel trade surveillance, on-demand trade reconstruction for auditing purposes etc.

The leverage of collaboration tools to produce virtual town halls and internal “water-cooler” chat services (like “Yammer”) for co-workers to interact, needs to be implemented. Humans engage visually and it is paramount to maintaining and promoting trust and cooperation. Remote working, split worksites and rotating shifts will result in several benefits including positive impact on environment and employee morale and a reduction of both capex and opex.

Financial Service Organizations should re-examine their long-term strategy to support remote working; this should include security, connectivity, capacity, and increased use of cloud and SaaS based platforms instead of the current legacy on-premise solutions.

It is NIIT’s opinion that with group restrictions, quarantines, and social-distancing guidelines in place, having a face-to-face conversation (video chats), adoption of innovative tools & solutions to handle regulatory compliance is going to be a key to survival and sustainable success for financial services.

Stabilize the Enterprise-wide Operation: The burning question for banks is if their current operations on-, near- and off-shore, are resilient and have adequate contingency plans in place for a crisis level of business continuity. Traditionally, the alternate location is planned to be the BCP location, however in today’s environment it is not enough. With COVID-19, it is imperative that business continuity planning is rigorously enforced and tested for resilience like never before.

Communicate Regularly and Effectively: Financial services organizations have struggled with consumer trust and confidence, especially in times of crisis. When a customer can’t get in touch with its banker or get access to its money, it can be frustrating and cause much discomfort. In such situations, a proactive, customized, omnichannel communication plan is required. Banks can look at positioning chatbots, Robo advisors for handling 24X7 customer interactions. NIIT believes that you cannot overemphasize the value of a good communication plan as an integral part of crisis planning and business resilience.

Protect your customers: Cyber criminals take advantage of environments of uncertainty and panic to launch their attacks. Consequently, cyber-readiness and security will be more important than ever to protect against phishing scams offering “COVID-19 cures” that steal information and install malicious code, for example. We believe that financial service organizations will benefit from being hyper-vigilant with proactive security measures and push communication alert messages.

Monitor Your Supply Chain: Financial Service organizations may be inwardly focused right now but it is important for them to monitor their external partners and suppliers (e.g. Infrastructure support partners, software product/platform partners, software development and maintenance partners etc.), continue to evaluate their situation and ability to support them and their supply chain as an anticipated COVID-19 related risk. If they are experiencing catastrophic issues, it could severely limit the bank’s ability to continue to perform. We strongly feel that a key component of risk management in the face of the crisis is monitoring of critical key indicators related to third party risk management.

Stay close to changes in Governance, Risk and Compliance: New regulatory, tax, accounting and reporting requirements as a result of COVID-19 will require immediate action by a newly collaborative, distributed and remote workforce. NIIT believes that firms should focus on establishing a new operating model to engage cross functional risk and compliance teams to effectively work together to mitigate risk in a constantly evolving environment.

Keep an Eye on Your Cost Structure:The COVID-19 virus will have a profound impact on the financial service organization cost structure and balance sheet as the new working arrangements are adopted and customer profitability changes. NIIT Technologies believe that new opportunities for optimizing workflows, cloud and as-a-service strategy, streamlined operations and resource requirements will surface as well as the need for installing new intelligent automation solutions designed specifically to improve output quality and reduce costs.

As a final thought we would like to remind financial services firms to look at other industries to evaluate the success and effectiveness of their methodologies for coping and innovating. Pay attention to what works, what falls short and what should be adopted.

We at NIIT believe that there is no simple or short-term answer. This is a life and business altering crisis, the likes of which we have never experienced in our lifetime. Use these bullets as the foundation for your decisions and your organization will be well prepared for whatever comes next:

• Continually monitor the crisis and be ready to change course at a moment’s notice as the situation evolves.
• Communicate frequently and be brutally transparent – your organization will be respected for it.
• When making decisions, remember to have humanity, we are all in this together and only collectively will we emerge healthy.

NIIT Technologies asks Industry expert Simon Lamkin to give his views on the top strategic considerations for the Travel, Transport and Hospitality space in a Covid-19 economy

As we near the end of this turbulent week, I feel we have all learned a lot. I have taken a seat at my desk and outlined my top ten thoughts for the Travel Transport & Hospitality (TTH) sector.

I have worked through previous challenges such as the 2005 terrorist bombings in central London and 2016 in Brussels; Ash Clouds in Europe and in Manila; run a travel technology company in a post 9/11 marketplace, but I have never seen anything on this scale. My chapters in my book on Operational Crisis Management will be getting fatter as the weeks move forward in 2020.

Out of every crisis comes opportunity, and here are my top observations that should be addressed by many Airlines (and other TTH Organisations) – they are in no particular order:

• Remote Working – over the past week, as a CIO community, we have looked to crowdsource a Remote Working Survival Kit ( V2) in response to Covid-19. This came about after the realisation that organisations talk a good talk but are a less effective in the delivery of the tools, processes and training to make this work effectively. This kit looks at the practical guidance on the technical and people sides of working from home. This is now being tested to the limits – the more forward-thinking organisations managed website performance, very few if any, managed and planned for Remote Working Capacity. This should be an off-the-shelf service and should be discussed with all customers in all sectors – this Survival Kit is free and can be shared without copyright restrictions.
• Crisis Management – many airlines are tried and tested for managing the worst-case scenario of ‘aircraft down’, but few are ready for more realistic events, such as airport closures, ash clouds, terrorism events and global shut-down of routes, lines of flying. There are two aspects to consider – the operational aspect of what to do, but also the customer service angle and the communication channels to use (outlined in more detail below). What assets do I stop using? What opportunity does this surface with regards to MRO activity, end of lease decision making for aircraft and engines? What is the size and shape of my skeleton team? How do I mobilise Gold and Silver command?
• CCustomer Service – Cdespite best efforts, most airlines are being criticised for not being flexible enough, not returning emails, having spent hours waiting on the phone, not refunding money quickly, not offering the right alternatives. This needs to be fixed using technology and soon, as I fear that Pandemic and global widespread disruption will become the new normal. eCommerce solutions are designed to take money well, they are all bad at giving the money back. Some quick fixes available, but detailed customer service process planning must drive the innovation agenda in this
• Dynamic Business Models – nothing demonstrates more about the need to be able to vary your way of working than right now. Borders are closed for passengers, but we all still need to continue global supply chains for food and products to keep the world moving. How can major carriers become more cargo intensive? Why do airlines treat pax and cargo as two separate businesses when they utilise the same asset? How can PSS systems be prepared to accommodate better management of the assets to the needs of the business of the day? This cannot be fixed with a band-aid, this needs strategic planning and thinking – most importantly, oddly, is to get a ‘group’ to act as a Group.
• Commerce Programmes – the Shop / Order / Settle programmes run by leading airlines should be positioned to take stock of the current situation and develop an ambitious plan going forward. Many organisations are taking advantage of lower productivity to take time to plan for the next iteration. Many IT teams are putting in place technology platforms when the rest of the business have stopped moving. “Filling the Void” thinking, creates momentum, allows positive thinking and keeps teams motivated. The vision for the programme must be structured and defined upfront and project teams must be deployed to work on core streams that can deploy independently from one another – allowing an agile continuous programme rather than the leviathan design thinking of more traditional airline groups.
• Crew Management – end-to-end supply chain management of cabin and flight crew for the world’s biggest airlines are generally managed using Microsoft Excel. How can this be the case when crew costs are one of the biggest operational costs to an airline? This model must start with Establishment and work down into day of operations to drive efficiency, flexibility and promote work / life balance for crew. Many vendors play in this space, but how can they have succeeded when the major groups still struggle with spreadsheets today?
• Disruption Management – I have been developing ideas for the ideal disruption management process for many years and over the last 6 months I have put my thinking down on paper and have spoken to several potential small software companies with no success. The need is here, especially in Europe with EC261 costs being a significant cost factor for every airline operating from Europe. The secret of the model is to drive and optimise normal operations as well as disrupted operations. If you can optimise small decisions well and then scale that up using the same process, then the output will be a complex disruption management tool offering options to flex decisions based upon core variables such as: Minimise Crew Cost and protect Flight Time Limitations (FTL); Maximise Customer Service at any cost; Balance of crew / customer service.
• Pricing Models – Many suppliers in the industry are still pricing products using 1970’s models – remember when telcos charged you for the minute or the amount of data you use. 2020 the industry standard charging model for core airline messaging is MCM – Million Characters per Month. Despite pushing industry, this model will not go away, and several organisations have been created to bypass these gateways and message using IP over the internet. Now is a time to take stock of this for the core suppliers, become a true partner to aviation and help them strategically change their pricing models in this major downturn
• My last point is Leadership. Organisations are doing all that they can to survive now and with the right support from government, banks and willing suppliers, they will survive and come out of this stronger. Now is not the time to be developing a five-year strategic review, now is the time to be making decisive moves to help prepare for H2 2020 and set the stall out for a return to a new normal in 2021. In one of the most powerful 79 seconds of video, Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director, World Health Organisation Health Emergencies Programme, summed up how to lead through the times that we are in: “If you need to be right before you move – you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management”.

A view from NIIT Technologies Insurance Advisory Experts Ekanath Hattangadi & Vikram Singh

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted many industries such as Travel & Transportation, Energy, Manufacturing, Retail and Hospitality. Although the impact on the Insurance sector is less severe, we believe that it will still be significant and highly disruptive; ranging from employee and business continuity issues, client service considerations to operating profit.

The immediate concern for insurers is the protection of employees, its distribution partners health and safety along with business continuity

The Insurance carriers have lost roughly 48% of their market value since the crisis commenced; with life & health insurance carriers particularly hit hard with average drops of 58%. The cost of COVID-19 testing and treatment is likely to squeeze U.S. health insurers’ profits, which could lead to higher premiums in 2021. To cover these costs, enabling insurers to remain solvent in a period of increased claims firms will have to consider increased premiums in the range of 4 – 40% in 2021.

We at NIIT Technologies believe that insurance carriers will be adversely impacted on the revenue side and the expense side resulting in lower earnings during 2020-21 re:

• Premium and Fees Income: Life & Annuity business will see a short term hit on premium income, but this will recover in the long term. However, in Property & Casualty we see more seismic impact, with short term reductions in new business premiums that we believe will continue over a long period of time (i.e. future premiums reduced due to reduced economic activity).
• Investment Income: Investment income will be significantly impacted over the coming months due to the volatility in the financial markets along with expectation that interest rates will remain at record lows for the foreseeable future.
• Claims: Life & disability insurance claims are expected to increase. Health agencies are estimating the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 could be 200,000 – 1.2 Million people in the US alone.

The impact of COVID-19 has already been significant. However, the impact on business’s and what the requisite mitigation required by firms will be based on how long the pandemic lasts and what happens once normality returns.

We suggest that insurance organizations need to be pro-active, that they should look to model the impact of COVID-19 and then determine the best strategy to mitigate. However, today, priority must be given to business continuity; firms need to determine their critical business functions, prioritise these to ensure that the level of service is maintained or even increased. Other business functions should be reduced or stopped to enable focus on the priority activities.

Firms should take into consideration levers such as customer experience, capital impact, revenue impact, liability exposure, regulations and government directives to help determine which business services need to be prioritized, while they overcome the current crisis.

The figure is NIIT Technologies view on which business services should be prioritised. Red indicates HIGH priority; Amber indicates MEDIUM priority and Blue indicates LOW priority services.

A priority concern for insurance carriers is to serve their customers and fulfill their promise while ensuring safety and well-being of their employees. Most insurers are in the process of activating or have already activated their business continuity plans. These should include the enablement of remote working, review of operational readiness of service providers and workforce planning to ensure staff availability.

Effective remote working practices must ensure availability of configured laptops, the correct collaboration tools, sufficient connectivity, increased helpdesk support and established working practices. Firms must also consider factors such as security, regulations and capacity when implementing remote working (e.g. collaboration tool selection must have encryption, logging and recording capabilities)

As well as ensuring continuity of critical services, Insurance firms need to pay attention to their customers, especially in times such as now, customers are concerned, and a key role of insurance firms will be to reassure and support them. Customers are anxious over aspects such as policy coverage, firms need to make sure that they can provide answers to queries in a clear, concise and efficient manner.

Firms should be pro-active in distributing FAQ’s and other collateral to their customers, they should look closely at their distribution channels and use situation as an opportunity to re-enforce capabilities via broker networks and direct channels using mail, mobile, social media

This would be an ideal opportunity to consider and plan for increased use of virtual assistants that leverage NLO/NLG and Intelligent Automation to increase availability and agility in responding to customer inquiries (e.g. around policy coverage, renewals, premiums, claims).

NIIT Technologies has observed in other industries, that leading firms are pro-actively building customer loyalty through gestures such as fee and charge waivers, relaxation, suspension or cancellation of payments (e.g. payment holidays). Insurers should also consider similar proposals for their customers, these could include relaxing the rules for lapse/reinstatements, waiver of surrender charges etc.

Now may also be the time for increased focus on optimization and efficiency programs, the key objectives being to reduce cost, increase capacity as well as improved quality leading to enhanced customer experience.

As we have stated, the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all aspects of life, it is a dynamic and evolving situation where the future is unpredictable. Firms will need to consider and prepare for:

• Increased claims ratio impacting profitability, budgets, cash flows, capital requirements etc
• Lower returns from traditional investments will continue due to market volatility and low to 0% interest rates.

Firms should also look at new business opportunities such as products providing pandemic coverage, cashflow coverage, force majeure exposure coverage.

Also, firms need to recognize that current situation may not be a one-off event and should determine if remote working may be part of the new operational norm. As such firms should relook at their long-term strategy that supports remote working; this should include security and connectivity, also increased use of cloud and SaaS based platforms instead of the current legacy on-premise solutions.

Last point, firms should review the impact remote working has on the effectiveness of their business to deliver services, to determine whether the adoption of new working practices and collaboration tools can enable this operating model to be the new norm. If the answer is yes, then firms should embrace as it provides opportunity to weather future disruptive events, helps to improve the quality of life of their employees and reduce fixed costs such as offices and related infrastructure.