6 Feb 2014

Tower refreshes its brand

6:59 am on 6 February 2014

Tower is refreshing its brand as it gears up for a bigger chunk of the market in the face of tough competition from international insurance giants.

Shareholders at the annual meeting on Wednesday were told that the company has a number of strategies to grow the business.

Tower's size and asset value have shrunk after it sold three of its four insurance businesses.

New chief executive David Hancock says the company wants to take advantage of being a small, local player.

He says research has indicated that there is great brand recognition of Tower and being local the company understands local conditions.

"We do not aim to be the lowest provider of price, what we do provide is we provide certainty about performance around insurance and features that we think are very, very competitive."

Meanwhile, fund manager Milford Asset Management, says it is watching how the company performs under its new chief executive.

Executive director Brian Gaynor says he likes to invest in growth companies and he is disappointed that Tower sold three of its four divisions.

He says it was disappointing that there was no update over how the company performed in the first quarter of the year.

Mr Gaynor says it's a huge change to the company in both the management and board level and he'll be watching to see how it performs.