Upgrades in pipeline after Tower split
Jim Minto
TowerAustralia expects the impending de-merger to allow its separate Australian and New Zealand businesses to focus more on their core markets.
Set to take effect from November 20, 2006, pending the approval of company shareholders, Tower Australia has flagged a number of improvements to its line-up of life products and systems.
“From a qualitative perspective [the de-merger] provides a lot of advantages,” said Jim Minto, group managing director of Tower Australia.
Specifically, these developments will be in the area of its retail life offerings and will relate to further improvements in service delivery, improving relationships with the finance company’s dealer groups, upgrading technology and retaining quality staff.
Further total and permanent disability insurance products will be added, and Tower is aiming for significant improvements in speed of completion for new policies through a streamlined underwriting process.
This will revolve around a trial of telephone-based underwriting which will be launched in the coming year, with a full-time management team to be dedicated to this.
Minto also spoke about the capital-raising process of Tower Australia, with $150 million in existing shareholder backing to be underwritten by Guinness Peat Group (GPG).
He was confident that the de-merger would be finalised by its original completion date, saying that he had “yet to meet a shareholder that will vote against it”.
Having proven it was capable of strong profit growth, which saw shareholders triple their money in the last three years, Minto said that the challenge going forward is to show GPG it has the ability to continue doing this.
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