SUN shines bright
ESTABLISHED in 1999, SUN Insurance (SUN) Company Ltd is the only Fiji-owned and operated general insurance company in the country.
The company is head quartered at the Kaunikuila House in Flagstaff, Suva, with its network of agents and branches spread across Fiji Islands.
SUN provides various content insurances from house contents policies to travelling policies and many more. However, they do not provide life and medical insurances.
Beginning today and every day until the end of the month (Thursday, June 30) SUN Insurance is conducting a June campaign for insurance awareness.
A very small percentage of the market is actually insured says general manager customer service Thomas Naua.
“I think insurance awareness is really important,” he said.
“By raising awareness SUN hopes to get people to be aware of the risks that they are taking by not insuring.
“I don’t think they realise the risk that they are carrying when a loss happens.
“Without the importance being highlighted more often, it’s at the back of people’s minds and through this awareness we hope it’s brought to the forefront.”
SUN is proudly a 100 per cent Fiji owned entity with all its profits retained within the Fijian economy.
Since its inception, SUN Insurance has invested around $40 million in the Fijian economy.
Further, SUN is the only company in Fiji with 100 per cent local staff content.
This gives SUN the edge in understanding the needs and requirement of its local customers. Thus, this has led to our slogan of “For Fijians By Fijian”.
With major success come challenges and SUN witnessed this first-hand during the COVID period.
“During this COVID period people were very acute to what they were spending.
“And insurance seems to be the last thing on one’s mind when there’s not enough money to go around.
“With people finding it difficult to meet up their daily expenses, it’s very difficult to overcome that and convince them to pay for that insurance.”
However, despite such challenges SUN manages to overcome them one step at a time.
“As things get better, Fiji is forecasting potential huge growth for this year.
“With the tourism opening and hotels being filled, we are on the recovery path, hopefully this should help where the public works it out to being able to go through with paying for insurance.”
SUN was borne out of NMBF Insurance (Fiji) Ltd when three local businessmen took over the ownership of the fledging company and re-named it as SUN Insurance in October 1999.
With a mere premium turnover of $650,000 in 1999, SUN has grown to be a large player in the Fiji market with just under 20 per cent of the Fiji general insurance market with a turnover in excess of $25 million in 2017.
The company has three branches, where specialised insurance advice is provided to its existing and potential clients.
To supplement the work of the head office and branches, SUN has appointed 12 agents that are conveniently located throughout Fiji.
With the Fiji wide coverage and being the only local insurance company, SUN has been able to capture the market in a very short period.