Tower Insurance revamps its parental leave benefits across Pacific branches

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The local Tower Insurance Company has announced that it has revamped its parental leave benefits, increasing it from 12 to 16 weeks paid leave for primary caregivers, and from 2 to 4 weeks paid leave for partners — effective on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.

Tower Insurance in the territory was formerly National Pacific Insurance (NPI). The New Zealand-based company took full ownership of NPI at the end of 2021.

“As parental leave legislation varies greatly in the Pacific compared to Aotearoa, this means that Tower’s offices across the region can enjoy benefits more than what is typically available in each location.”

For American Samoa, such benefits are generated by companies individually and are not required by law — local or federal.

A Tower insurance specialist who wishes to remain anonymous in response to Samoa News questions via email said that the insurer’s new parental leave benefits are also available across its divisions in the Pacific, including its teams in the Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, and American Samoa.

 Tower also announced that this revamped parental leave benefit in a LinkedIn post, where the insurer also shared that it came in time for two Tower Fiji employees who welcomed their third child a few days ago.

Currently, Fiji offers no government leave entitlements for partners and only 14-weeks paid leave for primary caregivers; with the insurer’s own leave benefits, both employees can stay put in their home in these integral first few weeks in a baby’s life.

The specialist said, “I love the organization and I can proudly say that Tower looks after their people.

“Well, time to have some more kids!”