COVID-19 Response

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The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted nearly every aspect of life, from livelihoods and economies to the ways we interact with each other. While 2020 brought tremendous challenge, it also brought innumerable acts of courage, generosity, dedication and ingenuity. Collectively, we rose to the challenge. The lessons we learned empower us to harness the best within ourselves to overcome obstacles and create a better future.

At the HEI family of companies, we see it as our mission to help our communities through the pandemic. We’re very proud of the commitment of our employees as we work to support our customers, protect fellow employees and help those impacted across our state.

As essential businesses, our core responsibility is being there when our customers need us. Our robust business continuity, emergency planning and incident management processes positioned us well for uninterrupted operations during COVID-19. Our utility focused on safely providing reliable electricity to keep our hospitals, businesses, and homes running. Our bank focused on ensuring money continued flowing through our economy and that federal aid reached small businesses and families.

At our utility, we implemented a number of steps to assist customers, including suspending electricity disconnections for nonpayment, offering flexible payment options and proposing to hold O‘ahu base rates flat. At the end of 2020, our utility pledged $2 million as founding sponsor of the Hawai‘i Utility Bill Assistance Program to continue supporting Hawai‘i residents financially affected by the pandemic and who fell behind on payments to electric, water, sewer and gas utilities statewide.

At our bank, by offering loan deferrals and the temporary suspension of various fees, we initiated policies to relieve customers of some of the stress that comes with loss of income. To help businesses weather the storm, in the first Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding round we deployed $370 million in (PPP) loans to about 4,100 small businesses employing more than 40,000 people. We’re now working on round two.

We are extremely proud that our companies and employees also made record charitable commitments of $5.5 million in 2020 — more than double our typical annual contributions — including at least $3.5 million related to COVID-19.

We are extremely proud that our companies and employees also made record charitable commitments of $5.5 million in 2020...including at least $3.5 million related to COVID-19.”