Atradius' parent company, Grupo Catalana Occidente (GCO), has taken an active role in providing help and support for different communities affected by the coronavirus crisis.
Supporting colleagues, customers and more
Protecting employees
The GCO Group’s primary focus is on ensuring the health and wellbeing of employees, customers and collaborators. To that end, GCO companies have provided opportunities for all employees to work from home, to minimise social contact and help reduce the spread of the virus. This began as limited on-site working at the offices of Atradius Crédito y Caución in China and Hong Kong and then extended to full home-teleworking for all staff in offices across Asia, Europe and elsewhere as the virus spread across the world. All sites of GCO affiliates are not currently accepting visitors.
Employee support includes provision of the latest health information on how to best stay safe during the pandemic and signposting customers on how to contact staff remotely.
Supporting customers
GCO’s affiliates support a wide range of customers across the business from consumers to SMEs, larger businesses and international corporates. For the Group’s B2B customers, business continues uninterrupted with account teams working remotely and fully contactable via phone or internet. For consumers and SMEs, particularly of GCO’s B2C business lines, customers are encouraged to access support online or via one of the customer service helplines.
Collaborating with Save the Children
GCO has made a contribution to the charity, Save the Children, to support vulnerable families who are facing hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. GCO’s charitable foundation, Fundación Jesús Serra, is working with Save the Children to help families with three main areas. These include food vouchers, counselling and technology support (internet connection and tablets, so that children have access to school education provided online).
“We want to support this programme by Save the Children, which intends to guarantee the right to education, wellbeing and protection of children and their families in face of the national emergency created by COVID-19,” said the General Manager of Fundación Jesús Serra, Ignacio Gallardo.
Investing in health initiatives
In addition to collaborating with the charity Save the Children, the Fundación Jesús Serra will donate 350,000 euros to one of the world’s leading COVID-19 vaccine research projects, and collaborate in the ‘Beat the Vid’ initiative.
The donation is going to one of the research groups associated with the Spanish National Research Council, the National Centre for Biotechnology (CNB). One of several leading research projects around the world, the CNB project is working to find a vaccine against COVID-19.
‘Beat the Vid’ is a multinational, multi-organisation initiative aimed at bringing together health innovations to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and prevent or prepare for future health crises. GCO is one of several organisations to get involved, including the multinational pharmaceutical firm, Novartis, and MIT Technology Review.
Further detail on each of the ways that GCO is working to support our communities through the coronavirus crisis is available in the press releases on the GCO website.