Banking with BNZ
Talking business before A chat with Neil Craigen, Senior Partner, BNZ Partners North Harbour
Neil Craigen is one of two Senior Partners at BNZ Partners North Harbour. A Zimbabwean by birth, Neil and his wife Debbie came to New Zealand due to the economic and political instability in Zimbabwe 13 years ago, in 2000. They love it. Neil says the attraction is the safe and stable environment that offers their youngsters (aged nine and 14) great opportunities. They are a sporting family as well so the fit is very good. Neil first got into the finance sector as an agent for the Barclay’s Bank finance house in Zimbabwe. When he came to New Zealand he went into private enterprise, buying a franchise business which he later sold to move back into finance. His finance roles have been with major banks, including a period as a mortgage broker, a mobile manager, and Neil Craigen. in leading roles in retail banking before the desire to get back into the business side led him to a Senior Partner position with BNZ Partners as the concept was launched in South Auckland. Over three years in South Auckland was followed by an operational role with BNZ Partners in the city. But Neil loves dealing with customers best, so jumped at the recent opportunity to become a Senior Partner at BNZ Partners on the Shore, replacing Ros Stewart. The Business Channel’s Aidan Bennett put these questions to Neil Craigen in mid-August. AIDAN BENNETT: What is the single biggest issue facing businesses in a financial sense at present? NEIL CRAIGEN: The biggest challenge is really adjusting to the after affects of the GFC. There has been a lot of consolidation in most business segments and many have made the adjustments and are now gearing up for growth. As a result of the GFC tightening, the general lack of business governance in many smaller companies has highlighted issues, particularly in the critical finance and cash flow areas. Many companies are running month to month rather than taking a strategic approach so some of the decision making can be quite narrow. BNZ Partners can help and I find this personally very rewarding. Being able to take our Education Partners in to customers who need assistance and seeing the results is heartwarming. It is essential that our customers are well prepared and informed for key decisions around capital expenditure and cashflow. It is much healthier for them to be involved in this process than leaving things entirely to their accountants. AB: You mentioned that you are not really a banker. What did you mean by that? NC: My real strengths are around leadership and sales, rather than technical banking. So I like to talk business before I talk banking and customers do relate to that approach. It is all about focussing on the people and their business. The great strength of our offering is that we can involve our specialists with customers as they need them. We have got real good people and my style is to lead them from the front, support them and ensure as a team we are delivering for our customers.
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THE BUSINESS CHANNEL
Issue 13 - September 2013
AB: The North Shore/Harbour area must be an exciting place for a bank to do business in with so many innovative and growing businesses? NC: South Auckland was quite a different market with a bigger focus on manufacturing and it really is the foodbowl of Auckland. The Shore on the other hand has a very progressive technical and innovative sector, with ICT, education and health being prominent. I am amazed at what some of the companies on the Shore are doing on the global stage. As the area grows it is also becoming more self-sufficient with less reliance on the city. There is a very strong business community with some great organisations such as ATEED, the North Harbour Club, Takapuna Beach Business Association, North Harbour Business Association, tertiary educational institutions and strong business associations helping to foster business growth. AB: You are a firm convert to the “Partners” concept. Why does it work so well? NC: Yes, five years on the model is starting to mature with great results. It is a fantastic model for relationship banking. The old bank manager used to be like a decathlete. Now we have relationship bankers who lead the process and they are backed up by a whole range of specialists in areas such as cashflow, foreign exchange risk, transactional etc. We can have six to seven people working with customers so the relationships are much deeper and the results better. We also have some pretty good facilities that are available to customers nationwide through the BNZ Partners network of 33 centres.