New Zealand insurance company takes over NPI

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Beginning yesterday, December 17, Samoa-headquartered National Pacific Insurance (NPI) became wholly owned by New Zealand insurer Tower, in “an important final step” in the group’s ongoing standardization and digitization.

“Tower had done a very significant digital transformation project in New Zealand over the last number of years,” the group’s managing director for the Pacific, Paula ter Brake told Insurance Business recently. “One of the final steps on that journey was to make a decision about whether we would extend that technology – and all the advantages that come with that technology rollout – to the Pacific Islands, and that decision was made last year.

“When you’re making a material investment like that, it does make sense to then really consider the brand of Tower across the nine geographies that we operate in. It would have felt a little bit odd to have rolled out our very important platform ‘My Tower’ to a number of geographies and then to have a ‘My NPI’. So, branding was an important consideration, but also what the digital platform will enable us to do.”

As previously announced, the subsidiary will be rebranded to take on its parent’s identity.

The shift will be simultaneous with the launch of Tower’s digital insurance solution in the markets where NPI is present – Samoa, Tonga, and American Samoa.

The wider group, meanwhile, also has Tower-branded operations in Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, as well as the Cook Islands and the Solomon Islands.