Update on Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the lockdown period

The National Coronavirus Command Council and the President has made the decision to enforce a nation-wide lockdown for 21 days, commencing from midnight on Thursday, 26 March 2020. In response, Ashburton Investments has initiated a series of projects to implement the necessary business resilience processes to ensure the continued provision of essential financial services in line with the directive from the President.

The situation remains fluid and we will continue to adapt our processes to minimise the impact on operations, and we are dedicating significant resources to prioritise:

employee health and safety at work; and
our ability to continue an uninterrupted service to our clients in the markets where we operate.

Ashburton Investments endeavours to remain operational during the lockdown and continue to provide customers with investment management services. This we believe can mitigate, to some degree, the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on South Africa’s economy and its citizens.

In addition to activating our business resilience processes in the context of both the pandemic and the lockdown, we have implemented several measures to the ensure the resilience of our operations and to limit any impact on our services. Measures taken include:
All essential services have been defined, together with functional support and relevant risk management.
Necessary arrangements have been put in place to facilitate working from home during the lockdown as far as possible. Critical employees required to ensure provision of these services have been identified.
Where critical employees are unable to work from home to enable the provision of essential banking services, measures have been taken to facilitate social distancing and heightened hygiene protocols on premises.
Given the lack of personal mobility enforced by the lockdown, we are proactively encouraging our customers to utilise our digital channels, and we are increasing our engagement with customers through virtual means where possible.
Ashburton Investments acknowledges that it operates within a much broader ecosystem and that to keep our services running many other participants in the ecosystem would have to be operational. We continue to engage with key suppliers to assess their ability to continue meeting their commitments to Ashburton Investments.
Business travel has been restricted for all employees across all territories.
We maintain increased frequency of cleaning our premises and, where relevant, our respective environments undergo deep-cleaning.
Reinforcement of increased hygiene practices in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) and local government advice.
Increased communication on COVID-19 (including our approach to managing the associated risks) and the provision of related information for our employees.
We have adopted all available technology (such as video and audio-conferencing tools) to conduct all meetings virtually.
Ashburton Investments is committed to maintaining its business operations and we are continuously reviewing the way we respond to COVID-19.

We would also like to assure you that we remain committed to providing best of breed investment solutions for our clients and to managing their investments with due care through this challenging period.

Our client servicing teams are available should you have questions or require assistance during this lockdown period. Kind Regards

Sizwe Nxedlana Chief Executive Officer