Steadfast has opened an office in Manila as it expands its shared services team and looks to access a new pool of high-quality recruits.

MD and CEO Robert Kelly, CFO Stephen Humphrys, and EGM Business Solutions Peter Roberts attended a ribbon-cutting and launch event earlier this month.

“We will have 150 on the ground there in the next couple of months,” Mr Kelly told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

The shared services team handles accounting and processing for Steadfast and some of its member companies.

“In other words, we let the insurance brokers do the insurance broking and we have systems to take the tedium out of what they do.”

About 80 people are already employed by the shared services team in Sydney, and Mr Kelly points out that work will continue.

“It’s an expansion, we’re not losing any local staff. But instead of having another 150 people on the fourth floor in Sydney we have chosen to set up in the Philippines.”

Mr Kelly says the company has been able to tap into the experience and contacts of Filipino staff already working for Steadfast, to access a new talent stream.

“It is very hard to get high quality people in Australia. We have a drought. The lag in immigration has meant there are not a lot of people lining up for jobs.

“So this works really nicely for us. We were struggling to expand our shared services in Australia because we couldn’t get the people, whereas we could set up in Manila and instantly get access to a whole range of people.”