The representative offices of the VUSO and Aska insurance companies in Donetsk changed their places of “residence”

This week Aska intends to move its headquarters from Donetsk to Zaporizhzhya, as reported by three sources on the insurance market. “We developed such a program and there is a corresponding order. We plan to transfer approximately 40–45 of our key employees. We have allocated financing for their accommodation and arrangement at the new location,” confirmed CEO of the Aska insurance company Andriy Shukatko. He added that the rest of the experts working in the zone of the anti-terrorist operations (ATO) have either left on vacation or are working remotely from other cities – Kyiv, Kharkiv and Berdyansk.

“We decided to move the head office to another city for two reasons. First of all, during the ATO the basic communications (electricity, water, Internet) may be cut without which it would be impossible to function. Secondly, nobody can guarantee that the hostilities will not reach the cities in which company operates,” said Shukatko.
Aska is not the first Donetsk insurance company to relocate its office from the ATO zone. Recently, the VUSO company also moved its staff from its central office in Donetsk.

The insurers have not provided any specific figures regarding the cost of relocation of their offices from the ATO zone. Shukatko says moving the central of offices of the largest insurance companies to other cities costs more than UAH 200,000 per month.

Ordered to move westwards

While Aska and VUSO change the “residence” of their central offices, the other major insurance companies in the region, whose back offices are located in other Ukrainian cities, have moved their employees from regional branch offices and departments in the ATO zone to safer places. “We adopted and are currently implementing an assistance program for our employees, who work in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. We created for them special jobs in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv. Some people have already moved, while others are still deciding whether to be relocated or not. Many of them decided to take a leave of absence,” said Vice President of the AXA Insurance company Andriy Peretyazhko. This company has 8 offices in the Donetsk oblast, 3 offices in the Luhansk oblast and a total of 250 agents in the Donbas region.

Naftogazstrakh (NGS) switched its Donetsk regional administration to a standby mode and employees of the INGO Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk branches, as well as employees of its Customer Service Center in Severodonetsk were given paid leave.
The Etalon company also had to provide its employees mandatory vacations. “Almost half of the employees from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts are currently on paid leave. Some of them, who have already reached the ceiling of paid leave are on leave at their own expense,” said a representative of the company’s press service. “Our management also provides employees an opportunity to work without reference to their place of residence. For example, one of the employees from the Luhansk office, who temporarily moved to Kyiv, started working in our head office”.

Sit out the war in a basement

Be that as it may, some insurers do not plan to change their Donetsk “residence”. For example, CEO of ASKO Donbas Pivnichniy Yevhen Matushevskiy said that there are no plans to relocated the back office of his company to another region from the Donbas. “In those branches and offices located in the area of the ATO we apply the principle of remote access for employees. But in those cities which have been already released – Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Chervoniy Lyman – people have returned to their regular operating schedule,” said Matushevskiy. This, he says, also applies to the central office of the company, located in the recently liberated town of Druzhkivka. “But we did not plan to move from Druzhkivka, even when it was seized by the terrorists. We simply provided our office with autonomous power supply, water supply and equipped a reliable basement for our operations,” he shared the experience of running an insurance business in conditions of actual war. He pointed out the surge in demand for insurance in liberated cities in the Donbas region. “Although in general, we have unfortunately observed a decline in received premiums based on results of the second six months of the year,” he said.