Blackout with banks and insurances

According to all forecasts, it could be chilly and dark next winter for homes, businesses, banks and insurance companies. Even the federal government now recommends companies purchase emergency generators as a preventative measure. With such generators possible power failures should be absorbed. "Equipping with emergency generators is particularly recommended for operators of "critical infrastructure", Patrick Graichen (Greens), for example, is quoted as saying. And quite a few companies are listening closely and taking precautions, such as the Berchtesgadener Land Dairy.

The goal of our dairy cooperative, in addition to a fair milk price, has always been to collect and process the milk of our 1.800 farmers to ensure. We have been preparing for the crisis scenarios of power blackout, cyber-crime and gas supply stop for months. For the latter, we successfully ran our steam boilers, which are operated in normal mode by means of the waste heat from our gas turbine, on oil in a test run. We have purchased our own fuel oil tanker, two of our drivers have successfully qualified for the then necessary transport of dangerous goods, we have made contracts with refineries and purchased a million liters of fuel oil in the port of Hamburg and stored it as an absolute emergency reserve. We are sure: The Berchtesgadener Land dairy can still collect milk from farmers and process it without gas and electricity supplies. This also fulfills our social obligation to provide basic food for the population.

What do banks and insurance companies?

Banks and insurance companies are also affected by the possible emergency, because to date there is no specification in the "gas emergency plan" how customers of the critical infrastructure – i.e. banks and insurance companies – are to be considered in the event of a possible shutdown.

Although all those involved in the "Gas Emergency Plan" have stated that they strive to be as accurate as possible in any consideration – for example, e-netz Sudhessen, as the network operator of Entega in its network area, has written to industrial customers every two years and provided relevant information, such as industry affiliation, options for alternative energy supply, company contact persons, etc. – they have not yet made a decision., queried. This information will then be the basis for the switching lists to be drawn up, but in the event of a gas shortage, the network operator will have to take into account all the available information and, for example, also the KRITIS list of the industry associations when making decisions. And that can potentially mean a very limited benefit for some banks and insurance companies.

So make sure banks and insurance companies provide for themselves? "No answer is also an answer" – you could now say, because only a few of the surveyed banks and insurance companies wanted to respond to the editors' survey.

"Unfortunately, there's not much we can say about it at this time. We are currently monitoring the situation very closely and are examining various scenarios and measures to deal with the issue," says the AXA Group press office, for example. Swiss Life says almost word for word: "We are constantly monitoring the market and current developments. As with other scenarios, we basically prepare for possible probabilities of occurrence."

Several of the requested institutes preferred "not to comment". What we were able to find out anyway, read now.

Debeka Group

Debeka Group's emergency management team is currently looking at different possible scenarios of energy shortages, especially gas. For gas, the worst-case scenario of a supply stop by Russia is also considered.

In this respect, we are currently dealing with scenarios in which our buildings are no longer usable or only partially usable due to a lack of or reduced heat supply from our employees. To this end, we have already audited our buildings across the country for the current power supply, so that the potential failures can be identified. Basically look into possible alternative energy supply options, but these cannot fully compensate for a complete supply freeze.

In the Corona pandemic, we were already able to prove that we could continue to maintain our business processes and thus provide unchanged service for our customers by offering the option of mobile working for over 95 percent of our employees. Our sales representatives are – contrary to the pandemic situation at that time – able to serve our members on site and online respectively. digitally. For employees who absolutely have to work on site, we are looking into relocating workplaces to buildings with alternative energy concepts, especially at Debeka's headquarters (z. B. geothermal energy or heat pumps) or the partial use of buildings using other energy solutions.

Signal Iduna

Signal Iduna Group's crisis team addressed the issue at a very early stage, using a variety of scenarios to develop measures to limit the impact of energy supply shortages. Currently we are working on the implementation of these measures. The top priority is to keep the business running for our customers. I am convinced that we will succeed just as well as we did with the Corona pandemic, because all employees and field sales partners worked together very professionally and with great commitment in this special situation, which is also a unique one.

Berlin Volksbank

The operational stability of our bank is elementary and accordingly has the highest priority for us. Overall bank control is geared toward it.

This also includes regular monitoring of the current situation and events. This also includes the infrastructure required for the bank. We are in constant contact with our partners so that we can take appropriate measures in good time if disruptive factors make this necessary.

Mathias Paulokat, press spokesman Berliner Volksbank eG

Quirin Private Bank

The Corona lockdown showed that even in crisis situations we can maintain our business operations and service to customers well. Quirin Privatbank specializes in investment and asset management. We do this in a total of 15 branches in Germany – and, if necessary, also from the home office via telephone and video conference. We know that this works well since the spring of 2020.

Much of our IT is handled by external service providers and the cloud. Our partners also prepare accordingly to ensure the services.

Regardless of the potential further impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, we are successfully working to steadily reduce our electricity and heating needs to improve our carbon footprint. This also makes us less vulnerable, of course.