Tower - growing careers and business opportunities right here in Fiji

This week I’m making my first visit to Fiji since borders opened to reconnect with the Fiji Tower team and our customers and partners in person.

Tower has been helping to protect Pacific Island customers and communities with insurance for over 140 years, having opened our initial Fiji office in the late 1800s.

Our long and vibrant history here has shown us time and time again that, while Fiji is a brilliant holiday destination, it’s also a brilliant place to do business. And the benefits are many.

For more than a century, Tower has been able to tap into local talent, expertise and important perspectives on issues like product development and more recently, climate change.

Our operations hub in Suva is the heart of our Pacific arm, in the last two years alone we’ve celebrated significant growth in Fiji, creating more than 30 news jobs, and are in the recruitment phase for another 20 team members to be onboard by the end of October.

This growth both bolsters the local economy and safeguards overall business continuity and resilience. Having people across different regions means our team in Fiji can support our Pacific customers as well as support peaks and troughs in customer service calls across the Tower Group.

Beyond investing in talent, we are also investing heavily in digital and data technologies to increase insurance accessibility and bring a more modern, streamlined insurance experience to the Pacific region.

Throughout 2022, we’ve invested near NZ$7m into our Pacific digital transformation, FJ$3m in Fiji alone, launching the country and the Pacific’s first ever online quote-to-buy insurance experience in March. In April, we also launched our signature My Tower platform in Fiji, giving our customers here the same service as our customers in New Zealand.

My Tower Fiji means that our customers no longer need to make the trip to one of our branches to make a claim, purchase insurance, change their sum insured or pay their premiums – all of this can now be done online via My Tower, simply using a smart device.

Paired with the likes of Vodafone Fiji’s recently announced investment into network infrastructure and Telstra’s acquisition of Digicel Pacific – we believe this comes at the perfect time for Fiji, mirroring the Fiji Government’s desire to build a more digital Fiji and increase internet access across the country.

We’ll launch the same digital capabilities in Vanuatu soon, with the rest of our Pacific operations in the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga to follow.

We see the Pacific as an excellent test bed for new technology and product development. For example, Tower is introducing new products like parametric insurance, in the Pacific.

The opportunity in Fiji is exciting from a talent, operational and technology perspective. It’s an opportunity I hope more New Zealand businesses consider.

At Tower, one of our core values is, ‘our people come first’. For us, as a major insurer in the Pacific and New Zealand, this means investing in the economic future of the communities that our people live, play and work in.

We do this by creating meaningful job opportunities and fostering career development ‘at home’. Home in this case meaning right here in Fiji, or for our other teams, the neighbouring countries we operate in.

We employ over 100 people in the Pacific, with the vast majority being locals and also women - proof that you don’t have to leave your home in the Pacific to progress in a successful financial services career.

Instead of outsourcing, we are investing in local economies and partnering with our Pacific family who offer great strategic value. I’ve seen first-hand that this approach is a win win for all. It adds value to Pacific and New Zealand economies, enhances the cultural ties of all countries and as the largest insurer in the region, creates great, localised experiences for our more than 30,000 Pacific customers.

Put simply, we’re a proud Pacific and New Zealand business, and we are very optimistic about supporting business and career opportunities for people in Fiji and the wider Pacific.

ENDS