Good for business
THE international borders opening in Fiji in December 2021 had been a really important step for business here in the country.
The BSP group chief executive officer Robin Fleming said it was more important for all the individuals who had been employed by various businesses throughout the country.
“The fact that the borders had closed meant that some businesses had gone through processes of standing down staff.
“It’s not just the people in full time employment, there are a number of people in the subsistence economy as well who really benefit from tourism.
“So the borders opening have been a fantastic opportunity for us to continue to provide the support for our customers which we have over the last two years.”
He said BSP (Fiji) was number one because of their customers.
“We’ve got a great team of staff here — over 550 in BSP bank and almost 200 in BSP Life — and our staff have been really committed to providing good services to our customers and recognising that perhaps sometimes those customers haven’t had their real financial needs satisfied by other banks.
“We’ve taken an approach that we want to be number one in every country we operate in.
“We had been number two in Fiji and the strong encouragement to our team here was if we’re number one in PNG, you can be number one in Fiji and they have really taken that challenge aggressively and positively.”
He said they were able to achieve a profit of just under $70 million last year and acquiring a couple of key strategic customers this year as well.
“Fijian Holdings moved over to BSP.
“We’ve got a real focus in our retail sector and there are a couple of other larger customers here who have also moved to BSP.
“And regionally we’ve been able has now to provide support to ATH with their recent launch of Vodafone in PNG, which again is another great example of regional dynamism around the Pacific.”
He said this was a Fijian company coming to PNG supported by a Pacific payment.
Mr Fleming said Vodafone had already got 300,000 subscribers.
“So it’s going to be a great opportunity for Vodafone to, to really participate effectively in a market where there’s almost 10 million people.”
He said from a group board level they had provided strong support and encouragement.
“We recognise that we’ve got the capacity we had the capacity to be number one.”
He said they did provide a lot of support to their staff over the past two years.