Insurance Group from Australia to hire 400 more people

Mike Emmett, QBE Insurance Group executive officer, talks about the company’s plans for the year. (CDN PHOTO/ CHRISTIAN MANINGO)

QBE Insurance Group from Australia is looking to hire 400 more people at its Cebu site this year.

Mike Emmett, executive officer, said the Cebu QBE Group Shared Services Center (GSSC) currently employs around 600. The center occupies four levels of the newly built Skyrise Alpha Building at the Cebu Business Park.

“After only two years and three months of operations in the country, the Philippines has become our fourth largest location with a total of 2,200 people on board,” Emmett said during the launching of their Cebu site on Wednesday.

Emmett said they need professionals who are compassionate and sensitive to their clients’ needs.

“Our business is into taking risks for our clients and we need people with a service culture, compassionate and humane in dealing with people when processing claims and we found that here,” he said.

QBE opened a facility in Manila in 2013. The Cebu site started operations last year. It processes claims and supports global human resource, finance and operations.

“We noticed that English in Cebu is very good and voice quality has been outstanding. Talent retention is also high because we noticed our people here are not as stressed as those in Manila. It could be because your traffic situation here is not that bad yet compared to Manila,” said QBE GSSC executive general manager Karen Batungbacal.

She said they were looking forward to the Asean integration, which would allow free flow of manpower.

“We are looking at that as that may also mean that we can hire people from other countries to help us with different languages,” she said.

Meanwhile, QBE Seaboard Insurance Philippines, Inc., formerly known as QBE Insurance (Philippines), Inc., also opened a business office at the ground floor of Skyrise Alpha.

“We have two major divisions which are the corporate division supplying products for property and engineering, marine and aviation, general liability and professional liability; and the retail division which provides motor and personal accident products to personal line customers,” said Joli Wu, president and chief executive officer of QBE Seaboard Insurance Philippines.

QBE is currently in 16 countries in Asia Pacific, with a workforce of around 17,000 people spread across 38 locations.