Hello from Coins.ph in Philippines :)
As you may know, the Philippines president announced last night that manila will be put under a 1-month, city-wide lockdown in order to prevent further spread of Coronavirus.
I’d like to share some of our experiences so far. The purpose of this is not to induce panic, but rather, to help ensure that others can have the benefit of being well prepared in case a similar situation unfolds in your home countries.
Supplies: there was no visible impact on supermarkets. Until yesterday. As soon as news started to break about the new cases, lines got huge, and shelves went empty. This happened extremely fast. Expect that this will happen faster than you expect. Make sure to stock up in advance on water, canned goods, cleaning supplies, etc. It’s virtually impossible to find certain products right now. Especially things that are required for sanitization.
Medication: n95 masks and alcogel have been off most shelves for a while here now. We are increasingly concerned about shortages in medication as well, due to panic buying, and possible disruptions in manufacturing. If you have a medical condition that requires you to take medication, make sure your prescription is filled, and that you have sufficient stocks on hand.
Cash: while coins is fully digital, we are increasingly concerned about the ability of retail banks to remain fully operational, esp given the risk of handling large amounts of cash (both security, and sanitary). In anticipation, we are advancing coins.ph employees their salaries for March. This is both to ensure they have funds in case of banking disruption, but also, so that they can have sufficient funds to stock up on supplies.
Work From Home (WFH)— We’ve sent the majority of the Coins.ph team to WFH in the first week of February. At the time I was concerned that I would be perceived as overreacting, but in retrospect, we are very happy with this decision. A number of employees are now finding out that they had high-risk of contact with corona virus. This is something they only found out after the fact, since cases are only now beginning to get tested and diagnosed. Having been on WFH for over a month, we at least feel safe that this risk did not spread through the office.
Having started WFH early also means we are now more adept at it, and know where the bottlenecks are. Now that we are expecting that we will really not be able to move around much, we are at least confident in what parts of our operations can keep running uninterrupted.
Expats — earlier this week, I spoke with all expats on our team and asked them to strongly consider immediately traveling back to their home country, due to the possibility of future travel restrictions. At that time, no one anticipated how fast the lockdown would come (literally 48 hours later), but fortunately, as a result, most expats who wanted to leave were able to do so just in time.
Business Continuity — we have an ongoing risk assessment processes. As part of this process, we are working to identify what risks might arise if our partners encounter operational difficulties due to the lockdown. We have tightened down our own liquidity management, and are disabling some services in advance where we think there is a high risk of not being able to fulfill services to customers on time.
Despite the difficulties that come with the lockdown, it’s been comforting to see gov’t here mobilize quickly to keep everyone safe.
Thats it for now — Stay safe, and, if helpful, will continue giving updates on how things are going here.
Best,
Ron