MEDIA RELEASE
“SMALL BUSINESS
IS SET TO START GROWING”
CANSTAR releases
best value New Zealand small business banking award
for 2013
29th August 2013:
The entrepreneurial spirit in New Zealand is alive
and well: according to Statistics New Zealand there are
approximately 469,000 businesses in New Zealand, 97% of
which are small businesses. While 69% of those businesses do
not engage any employees, the remaining small businesses
with less than 20 employees account for approximately 30% of
the workforce. Successfully realising their potential
requires specialist support from financial institutions in
terms of both products and business coaching.
“Last
month at the 26th Annual SEAANZ Conference (Small Enterprise
Association of Australia and New Zealand) the Association
President, Professor Tim Mazzarol, noted that despite the
importance of small enterprises, the level of attention they
have historically received in both academic and government
terms has been low,” said CANSTAR General Manager – New
Zealand, Derek Bonnar. “It means that the role of
financial institutions is particularly important: in
addition to providing financial products they need also to
step into that research and policy breach and provide
education, training and support for their small business
customers. Fortunately our research indicates that New
Zealand small businesses are in good hands.”
Each year
CANSTAR research the small business banking offerings
available from New Zealand financial institutions. This
consists of a review of the loan, credit card and deposit
products that are available, as well as assessment of
important institutional factors. This includes branch
coverage, the availability of relationship managers, online
banking functionality, merchant and education services. This
year CANSTAR congratulate Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) on
winning the best value New Zealand small business
award.
“BNZ’s success is a result of their strong
institutional offering and value of their product suite,”
said Mr Bonnar. “It is their consistent performance across
the different product sectors coupled with their
serviceability and the benefits they offer to their small
business customers that mark them as best in the industry
for 2013.”
“BNZ provide an impressive range of
business templates and tools,” said Mr Bonnar. “Running
a small business is time intensive; giving business owners
access to market knowledge to help identify business growth
opportunities is a great value-add. An example is their
Business Start-up Health Check tool, which is designed to
assess how well positioned a person may be to succeed in a
new business. At the end of the health check, the customer
receives a downloadable list of recommended actions to take.
It provides a wealth of information and templates to help
get their businesses heading in the right direction.”
Responding to the award, Harry Ferreira, BNZ’s
Head of Small Business, Retail, said that BNZ love being a
part of their customers’ journeys. “Business owners get
into business for reasons as diverse as their business,”
he observes. “Owning a business is a fast flowing, rapidly
changing thing, exciting, frustrating and nerve wracking at
the same time. We enjoy not just hearing about, but also
helping our customers to tell their stories to the world. I
personally find the drive, passion and care people have for
their small businesses to be inspiring and
motivating.”
While Mr Ferreira acknowledges a number of
current challenges for small business, including cashflow
and the pending RBNZ Loan to valuation ratio changes, he
believes that there are clear opportunities ahead. “The
economy is looking set to start growing, especially with the
huge rebuild efforts beginning to take shape in
Christchurch,” he says. “This is a clear opportunity for
the small business sector to grow rapidly. Industries such
as the Technology, Health, Migrant and Food and Beverage are
all areas we have identified to have strong future growth
opportunities which will in turn help stimulate better GDP
performance per capita.”
The CANSTAR best value New
Zealand small business award acknowledges not only
BNZ’s strong product suite but the valuable contribution
they make to the small business sector overall.
To read CANSTAR’s small business award report,
please visit www.canstar.co.nz.
Harry
Ferreira, BNZ’s Head of Small Business, Retail, has shared
his views on some of the main challenges, opportunities and
requirements faced by New Zealand small business owners
today. These can also be accessed at www.canstar.co.nz.
ENDS