The Covid 19 Pandemic has been hard for people and communities all around the world specially in the developing world where lockdowns have completely decimated the local economy. People have been suffering a lot from the pandemic and there seems to be no end in sight for the pandemic even though vaccines are now available. In these hard times there were many companies and institutions that came forward to help the people in countries that were hit hard with the COVID pandemic.
One of the first projects targeted towards communities affected by the Pandemic started in April of 2020 was a COVID-10 Strategic Preparedness and Response Program where many countries and institutions raised more than $1.9 billion to assist countries hit hard with the COVID-19 virus. One of the first banks to come in on the project was MERCO bank and their social responsibility division, in partnership with the world bank. MERCO contributed millions into the fund last year realising quite early how COVID 19 was going to turn out.
Moreover, at the end of 2020 the vaccine rollouts were being planned and many countries were not able to afford vaccines. This prompted another fundraiser in which more than $12 billion were approved by countries all across the world and some institutional investors. Again this time as well MERCO partnered up with World bank and other banks as well and they as a group contributed more than a billion dollars in this great cause.
MERCO was at the forefront of the fight against COVID, the bank realised the problems everyone had to face because of COVID and ramped up its efforts to help the community. The bank started with eliminating late fees on late loan payments, and lowering interest for loans given in 2020 so people can borrow money at a lower rate to get themselves in a better financial position. The bank also made a lot of its services cheaper so people don’t have to pay more for their services and thus help in their daily lives by lowering the cost in these troubled times.
In addition to all this MERCO bank expanded the scope of its already running programs to include the COVID 19 protection in it as well. It is also planning to close all of its physical bank branches and go completely digital to lower cost in the pandemic and transfer that benefit over to the customer who have been suffering a lot.
