Tower has been reshaping how it reaches customers. Long known as a direct-to-consumer insurer, it has spent the past year building distribution through third parties, and on July 2 it added the smallest and newest example: a tie-up with rental-services platform Renti under which Tower becomes Renti’s exclusive provider of home, contents, and vehicle cover. Tenants and landlords can arrange insurance while completing other tenancy steps on Renti’s mobile service. Renti is one of three points on that line. The other two are far larger, and together they show a clear direction of travel.
On July 1, Tower took over underwriting of Westpac NZ’s house, contents, car, and landlord insurance. The move ended a relationship IAG NZ had held with the bank since 1994 and followed a Westpac request-for-proposal process. The handover gave Tower its first bank-distribution channel at scale. Forsyth Barr analysts cited by Interest.co.nz estimated it could add about $70 million in gross written premium by 2030 if Tower captures 35% of Westpac’s existing book.
A second initiative, a referral arrangement to offer cover to a portfolio of Kiwibank customers, is due to go live in the second half of FY26. Against a bank channel and a bank referral book, Renti is a modest addition. Director of partnerships Alan Fletcher (pictured) framed it as one of several such platform tie-ups Tower is pursuing. “Renti’s digital approach and growth potential make it a natural fit for Tower, and we’re keen to partner with more Kiwi platforms that help people organise everything in one place,’ Fletcher said.
The Renti deal represents embedded distribution: insurance offered at the point of transaction inside another company’s platform. Renti is an Auckland proptech founded in 2019 that provides digital onboarding tools to property managers and renters, and has previously integrated with Trade Me Property. Its user base is not disclosed in sources meeting standard verification, and no independent assessment of the deal was available at the time of writing.
Tower is not alone in the model. Auckland-based digital insurer Cove, which underwrites car, pet, and contents cover, operates a partnerships arm distributing through consumer brands. Platform providers such as Kanopi build the infrastructure for insurers to embed cover into distribution partners across direct, embedded, and agent channels, with property lines including landlord and contents among the products offered. For Tower, a large-listed insurer, the notable feature is the pairing of an established balance sheet with distribution channels more often associated with insurtech entrants.
The economics of tenant contents cover also shape the logic. Contents is a low-premium line relative to house or motor, so a small, embedded placement is unlikely to move an insurer’s book on its own. The commercial case for such deals rests less on standalone margin than on customer acquisition at a low-cost moment, the option to cross-sell higher-value cover later, and lifetime value, an assessment consistent with Tower framing Renti as part of a channel-building strategy rather than a near-term premium driver.
Lower penetration among tenants underpins the target. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has put overall residential insurance uptake at around 96%, attributing it partly to insurance being a condition of home loans. That driver does not apply to renters, whose contents cover is discretionary, yet renters occupy 31.9% of households after a Stats NZ revision to its 2023 Census base. Renti chief operations officer Drake Farmer pointed to that reach. “Partnering with Tower means we can help renters think about insurance at a relevant moment, and make it easier for them to protect the things that matter,” Farmer said. Tenants also carry contents exposure independent of the building; burglary affected about 184,000 households in 2025, a core contents-claim trigger even as the rate eased from 2018.
The distribution model matters to where conduct liability sits. Under the Conduct of Financial Institutions (CoFI) regime, in full force since March 31, 2025, licensed insurers must maintain a fair conduct programme covering all channels, including intermediated ones. Those obligations attach differently across Tower’s three arrangements. The Westpac handover is a full underwriting transition, and the two institutions jointly carried conduct responsibility for it. A referral model such as Renti’s, where the platform directs a customer to Tower to buy and hold cover under Tower’s own brand, typically sits at a lighter point on that obligation curve than a co-branded or own-brand distribution deal, where responsibility for customer-facing communications is shared more directly between the parties. The economic terms of the Renti arrangement, including any referral fee, were not disclosed.
