The interview: Nadine Tereora - Believing in yourself the key

It's been a year of highs and lows for Nadine Tereora.

The 42-year-old chief executive of life insurer Fidelity Life has had to hold the fort while a former staff member was sentenced for importing drugs, using the company as a front.

But two months later, Fidelity announced that the NZ Superannuation Fund had decided to invest $100 million in it, buying a 41 per cent stake.

"It has certainly been an interesting 14 months in a number of ways, mostly positive," she says.

"I think it was unfortunate that an incident involving a previous staff member and drugs happened."

But she points out that the offending happened more than two years ago, when she was not chief executive of the company.

"It was about two and a bit years before I arrived at Fidelity Life."

Tereora joined the company from insurer Asteron at the end of 2016.

In August last year, former employee James Bell was sentenced to six years and 10 months' jail for importing meth, two years concurrently for importing GBL, and convicted and discharged for possession of cannabis.

Tereora says the sentencing didn't cause much disruption for the business, which is New Zealand's largest locally owned life insurer.

"In fact the key for me and my executive was to make sure the staff that were here at the time were actually protected as it went through the media again."

She says the biggest lesson from the experience was that it was dealt with appropriately at the time.

"We engaged with the appropriate authorities at the time and it was pretty seamless in terms of the impact for Fidelity Life."

You get the impression that not much shakes Tereora, who is one of the few women at the top of New Zealand's financial services sector.

But when she is asked about the biggest challenges in getting to the top, it isn't outside factors she points to.

"Probably the biggest challenge is actually the belief in yourself, and as many women do, we actually chase perfection.

"One of the things I have learned in my journey is there is no such thing as perfection and you have just got to be comfortable with the good old 80-20 rule and the fact that the biggest key to your success is making the most of opportunities and leaning in."

Tereora reckons she had a "pretty stock standard" upbringing, growing up on Auckland's North Shore.

Her mum was a hairdresser and dad a builder, and they divorced when she was 7.

She has two brothers who are both builders.

While there was no particular influence which led her into wanting to go into leadership, she learned from an early