Since the start of these unprecedented times, the Desjardins Group and the Group retirement savings team have been there for you and your plan members.
We responded quickly to align with government recommendations and to comply with social distancing protocols in all our activities. Within two weeks, over 80% of the Desjardins Group employees were fully working from home. Within the Group retirement savings team, over 96% of our employees are currently working from home.
Our Customer Contact Centre experienced an increase in the volume of calls over the past two months compared to the same period last year. The increase in calls mostly came from members who were very concerned about the downfall of the stock market and the impact on their retirement savings. However, since mid-May, we have seen the volume of calls come down and are slowly getting back to normal volumes.
We continue to react quickly Opens in a new window. to address plan members’ concerns:
Plan members reacted positively, with thousands of views of the May 6 webinar and good attendance at the education sessions. This demonstrates the need to support and accompany your plan members.
Throughout this period, we have encouraged your plan members to use our online services and this resulted in a sharp increase in web usage. We also recently created two tutorials Opens in a new window. to support them when opening their account or retrieving their user ID or password.
While we continue processing requests received by mail, we invite you to use our online plan sponsor services via dfs.ca/plansponsor. You can also reach us by email or by contacting your client relationship manager.