Zurich Malaysia launches assistance program for pandemic affected businesses

The program is worth MYR2m.

Zurich Malaysia has launched a program to help businesses affected by the COVID-19 virus.

This special arrangement by the General Insurance and General Takaful businesses sets aside MYR2m ($480k) for goodwill coverage on COVID-19 related expenses for all eligible customers.

Under the COVID-19 Business Assistance Programme, businesses whose employees are confirmed to be COVID-19 positive, can claim for expenses such as disinfection of premises and COVID-19 testing for employees, both infected or non-infected.

In the event of a death of a customer's employees medically diagnosed due to COVID-19, the customer can claim a lump sum payment of MYR500 per employee. The total claims payment for each customer for the two expenses listed above and the unfortunate event of the death of a customer’s employee under this program is subject to a maximum combined value of MYR5k.

The Zurich COVID-19 Business Assistance Programme complements existing national assistance and incentives to support business continuity. This includes the Prihatin Special Grant for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), Wage Subsidy Programme to support employment as well as Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) levy exemption and bank loan moratorium to support business cash flow, as well as micro credit schemes.

“The pandemic has brought about tremendous economic challenges to businesses to which we empathise with our customers facing these difficulties. This programme was launched as a result of their feedback with a primary focus on helping our customers restart their business operations with as much minimal downtime as possible. We hope that this commitment reflects our unified purpose to sustain an inspiring and optimistic future with and for all Malaysians,” Zurich Malaysia Country Head Junior Cho said.

The Zurich COVID-19 Business Assistance Programme is effective immediately until 31 December 2021, or until the allocated MYR2m funds are completely utilised.