“A volcano?” I said.
“Yea, a volcano,” replied Rie Doyama, Corporate Responsibility Manager at Titan FX.
I was trying to figure out how someone from Japan ends up living in Vanuatu. It’s a personal story so I won’t spill the beans here, but a key component of the story is a quest to see a volcano. You’ll have to travel to Vanuatu to figure out the rest.
The reason we were making small talk and discussing volcanoes is because we were driving around Port Vila, Vanuatu’s capital, to look at some of the social initiatives that Titan FX has undertaken there.
Our first stop was a set of street lights that Titan FX has erected around the capital city. One of the problems that you have in Vanuatu is that there are cyclones. When these occur, they knock down the street lights, which then take a long time to rebuild. If you’re in the UK then imagine all the telephone lines being knocked down and then having to put them again – cumbersome stuff.
The street lights that Titan FX built can be taken down easily and then put up again, once the cyclone is passed. They also run on solar power.
After we’d seen those, we then headed over to the local hospital. Although there is a private hospital and medical centre in the town, there is also a public one but it didn’t have an intensive care unit until recently.
Again, Titan FX was one of the big donors for the initiative. We couldn’t go into the ICU itself because…it’s an ICU. However, we saw the building itself and were able to hang around on the inside a bit and get an idea of what’s going on.
Probably our most eventful stop on this learning tour was going to see Troy Spann from the ProRescue team.
ProRescue is a voluntary service that helps (or ‘rescues’) people who have been in accidents. When we went, they had recently had to deal with some bad car crashes and also a plane crash.
I don’t know that I’m a great judge of character, and I don’t want to get all corny on you, but Troy was one of those rare people you meet and you feel like they are just a good dude – something we could all learn from, eh?
He was also very happy with the equipment they’d managed to get from a fundraiser that Titan FX had been a part of. One of the things was a new truck, that apparently made it much easier to get closer to accidents and not have to lug their equipment along from a distance.
“About a year ago, a bus went over a cliff edge and we just couldn’t get to it properly,” said Spann, who is originally from Australia. “After that the community really rallied around us. We wanted to raise VUV 7m (approx. $60,000) but it was more than 9m vatu in the end. We do this big fundraiser each year, where we rip off the TV show Survivor. And Titan has been a part of that every year for at least the last three years now.”
Meeting the Titan FX team
Titan FX is the biggest broker in Vanuatu in terms of headcount. As noted in our prior article, the company has a large office in the centre of Port Vila, with employees doing everything from payments to technology.
The best analogy I can use is that Titan FX is kind of what Exness is to Cyprus but obviously on a smaller scale. They don’t have the Mini Coopers yet but I’m sure the staff can dream.
Tafailagi Peniamina is a Legal Analyst at the firm, helping to manage several parts of the business, including the firm’s different licenses and payments. Originally from Samoa, she ended up at Titan FX after moving to Vanuatu with her partner.
“When I first saw the advert, I thought ‘forex’, so it’s foreign exchange, but obviously it’s not quite the same,” Peniamina told me. “Working here has been amazing. It’s very different to my prior roles because I came from a very traditional legal background doing court work. Here it’s so varied. A lot of what you do is about risk mitigation and risk management but then you are having to project manage across other parts of the business as well.”
One of the other things I was curious about is whether there is actually the potential for the industry to grow here. In simple terms, if a company wanted to hire people, would the people be there for them to hire?
“If you put in the effort, then you will get qualified people,” said Peniamina. “It’s like anywhere right? People want to progress, to learn. So if you hire someone to just man an office, ok, they can do it but it’s the minimum they need to do. If you can provide a work environment where people can learn and progress, then you will get better people because there are lots of them here.”
My other question for the Titan team is whether it’s actually considered one of ‘the’ places to work in Vanuatu. Port Vila is small – there are only about 40,000 people – and most other finance jobs seem to be at banks, which aren’t renowned for being fun places to work.
“Titan FX set the bar high, definitely,” said Justine Pikioune, a Finance Manager, who joined Titan after getting a scholarship to do a masters degree in Australia. “It’s a great environment to work, everything is open space, you can collaborate easily. The company gives a lot of simple benefits for your wellbeing, like underwriting low interest loans for making your house safer against cyclones or medical insurance.”
The other thing that all of the employees highlighted was Titan’s social plans, which was unprompted on my part.
“I have a school debate program, which is supported by Titan FX and an Australian government organisation,” said Pikioune. “At the moment there are eight different schools taking part and we bring them together for debate clubs, so that there can be a ‘debate winner’ as well. So I can do my day to day finance job, which I like, but I also know that I can do this as well. And it’s not just that, there are lots of other projects as well that they support us with as a company. During my day they even allow me to work on those projects and activities. That motivates me a lot and gives me purpose, so it’s a nice place to work.”
