We spent a few days in Cromwell with the kids at the end of the last school holidays. After a fairly long and dreary Timaru winter it was nice to escape to the open spaces of Central Otago.

Ever had that feeling of utter and total business confidence?  When you know that your business is humming, profits are good, and you’ve got a great team of people in all your key roles?

Chances are, you probably felt quite bullish about expansion or further investment.  

Chances are you probably felt emotionally very good as well.

Of course, you probably have. Although as a farmer, up until recently, you’ve probably been feeling a little bit of the opposite. Weighed down by previously lower commodity prices, then resultant bank pressure and all wrapped up in increasing environmental and social pressure, confidence in the Agri sector has been distinctly uncommon.

In fact, “broader agricultural economy net confidence” (source: Rabobank economic survey, last version Dec 2020) has been net negative since early 2018. That’s a heck of a long time despite commodity prices during this time increasing to near record highs.

Right, so we all know what Chinese Whispers is don’t we?  

It’s a kids game where players form a line or circle, and the first player comes up with a message and whispers it to the ear of the second person in the line.

The second player repeats the message to the third player, and so on.

When the last player is reached, they announce the message they heard to the entire group. The first person then compares the original message with the final version.

Mistakes often accumulate along the way, so the last player’s reading differs significantly from that of the first player, usually with quite amusing or humorous effect.

Unfortunately, this can also happen in the Agri credit process.  

And the effect is not humorous nor amusing. It can be downright devastating.      

Credit approvals in Agri all have significant consequences – they are the difference between getting further investment capital or not (which can have significant wealth accumulation opportunities in the future) and at the other end of the spectrum, they could mean the difference between paying significantly more in interest, or even worse, having to divest a farm at the wrong time.

Suffice to say, the stakes are high.

So what has all of this got to do with Chinese whispers?   Well, the Agri credit chain is not a band of one.  

Very rarely does the frontline banker have the sole discretion to make a lending decision. In nearly all cases, this decision will be referred to another authority.  

Often, it goes through at least two other parties – sometimes further.  

All along that journey there is risk that the message evolves, changes or weakens.

And guess what the most important link is – you the farmer – and your start point with what you provide to the frontline banker.  

How and what you provide, frame, analyse and present is a significant determinant to the success of that credit process – and whether you accumulate more wealth in the future, or don’t.  

But the best part about this, is that its easy to control if you know how.

Let’s start by understanding some of the assessment factors that a bank goes through with the credit process.

Now, to the uninitiated eye, a typical credit process looks like this: Have a meeting with the bank, maybe have a tour of the physical assets, provide your past financial statements and your future budgets and make your request.

We're rapt to announce that Jordain Adams has joined our Canterbury team alongside Nathan, Nick, Cam and Cameron. We've been able to work alongside Jordain in her previous role with a local corporate Agri-banking team and her work ethic and style really impressed us, so we are delighted she has chosen to join our team for the next stage of her career. Read below for a bit of Jordain's background.

Jordain joins Charlotte, Grant and Cam Blain in filling new roles created this year so far to meet the increasing demand for our services.

It's an exciting time for our company as our customers are really seeing the financial benefits of the hard work and careful planning that has been central to our strategy over the last few years. It gives us confidence to continue to invest in our people, our technology platform and our customers to ensure that we remain the leaders in our field. 

We're still on the hunt for more of the best people. We are creating roles across New Zealand and would love to talk to more likeminded professionals who want to know more about what we do and why it makes a difference.

Every few months another ‘most trusted” survey hits the media headlines, providing a bit of fodder for office and talkback conversations.

Most trusted brand, most trusted New Zealand celebrities (past winners including such luminaries as Suzanne Paul and Richie McCaw!), and most trusted professions (politicians not typically well represented!).

In a world of fake news, consumerism, brands and ideologies built around personalities, genuine trust is as valuable as ever.

Last week Andrew wrote a great article on succession, focusing on inter-generational businesses that have the quality, diversity and profitability to appeal to family and support positive succession outcomes. Without these dynamics, successful succession outcomes are hard to come by.

This week I would like to focus on a few other elements that will support succession, with a central focus around trust.

I read an article recently that described the three core elements of Trust.

The article was focused on what breeds trust in organisations, but the principles can be applied to any situation where trust is critical to a positive outcome or experience. The elements were:

1. A mindset built around genuine benevolence – that is, that you feel that the party you are dealing with has your best interests at heart. That doesn’t mean a fair and balanced commercial outcome can’t be achieved or is given away, but it means that you have confidence that the other party is genuinely interested in your success, your satisfaction or in meeting your key needs. And critically, that they will do it on a sustained basis, not just a one-off transaction.
   
   
2. Competence – this is pretty simple. At the core of any relationship that has a high degree of trust is the confidence that the other party is competent – that they can do the job, provide the service, run your organisation, provide great advice – with an appropriate level of skill or execution.
   
   
3. The ability and willingness to resolve disputes – any relationship will have times where tension is high, or parties aren’t seeing eye to eye. A relationship that is built on trust will have the ability to navigate these times and find a solution and outcome that allows all parties to move on with the relationship intact (and possibly strengthened).
   
   

So how does trust relate to positive succession outcomes

(and running a successful business)?

When you think about it, trust is at the core of succession in so many ways. To achieve a positive succession outcome, you need to trust:

• Each other – the base of everything else that goes into a succession process. Do you have trust in each other? Do you have confidence that those involved have your best interests at heart? Are you able to be open and honest with each other, knowing that sharing openly won’t be used against you? Do you exhibit trust when setting up the ongoing structure of the business? And have you earned trust?
  
  
• In advisors – invariably, a well-managed succession process will involve a group of advisors. In some cases, these advisors will have an execution role – legal framework, ownership structure, funding solutions etc. In other cases, an advisor will play a key leadership role in facilitating the succession process and being a part of the ongoing execution. Whatever the role they play, having the ability to trust your advisory team – the faith that they are working for you, that they are competent to do the job you are asking – is critical. Trust is also at the core of holding all these parties to account for their own performance and execution.
  
  
• To put the right people in the right roles – as Andrew pointed out in his article, a great business is key to succession. And a great business has the right people on the bus and puts the right people in the right roles. Whether that be operationally, or at advisory or governance level, being prepared to make the hard calls on key people and trust in their abilities is key.
  
  
• To be held genuinely accountable – again, another fundamental value of a great business. Having built a clear strategy, having plotted a deliberate pathway, having developed excellent systems for monitoring performance – are you prepared to be held accountable to all these elements?
  
  
• To let others, have control or influence in your business – this can be one of the hardest things to achieve. Having built a business over decades, being in control of most aspects operationally and making all the decisions, are you prepared to let others in? What do you need in place to be able to trust that the people coming in to run the business, drive decision making or provide governance or strategic support are trustworthy? Or what is it about yourself that you need to get comfortable with, to allow yourself to trust these people?
  
  
• The process – there are rarely quick and easy solutions to succession. These are processes that take time and energy and patience and leadership. And at times you will be frustrated, or feel things aren’t moving quickly enough or in the right direction. But if you have laid out a clear process, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, at times you will need to just sit back and trust the process.
  
  
• To let go! – possibly the last and the hardest step. Trusting your process, the people around you, the plan and the structure and being able to step back and let go.
  
  

We work with many businesses at various stages of the succession process.

Trust doesn’t get built overnight. It’s built on great communication, on openness, on transparency, on a willingness to let go and on the confidence that there is a level of competence from all involved that inspires trust.

When there is trust – and where succession is done well, what does that look like? And what has led to that point?

When I draw on personal experience, the businesses I see doing this well exhibit the following characteristics

• Starting early – and the earlier the better
  
  
• Communication – an environment where open and honest communication is encouraged, and where people feel like they can articulate their needs and be heard and understood
  
  
• Transparency – being open and transparent about what the business is, how it is performing, what its strategy is, what are its strengths and weaknesses. Being honest about what the exiting generation wants and needs. And having an environment where the next generation feels the same.
  
  
• Clear expectations – what do you want personally, and what do you expect of others?
  
  
• Leadership – who is going to drive this process. Who has the competence and mindset to see a truly great process from beginning to end?
  
  
• Independence – getting the right people around the business, people who genuinely want to see a great outcome and will go on the journey with you. Too often we see a “succession plan” – a document that lays out some needs and a structure, but no pathway to a successful endpoint. Great independent support will be there right through with you, playing a key role in successful execution.
  
  
• And of course, a great business – one that everyone wants to be a part of.
  
  

And the last element that often gets missed is to have some fun!

Being able to build and transition an inter-generational business is something to be immensely proud of. Yes, there will be bumps along the way, but you are achieving something that few businesses have the opportunity to do. That should be a satisfying and fun process, something to cherish and appreciate.

No successful and sustainable relationship exists without trust.

And successful and sustainable relationships are at the heart of succession and running strong businesses. At NZAB, trust is our highest priority. We exist to see our clients succeed, and every month we are measured on that. We employ the best in the market, with years of knowledge and experience and the know how to help you navigate the challenges of succession, the challenges of building a business that people want to be a part of.

So, trust the process!

I was reading an article recently about the traits of some of the most engaged businesses based on a survey by Gallup. It was a global survey and started by noting that, “85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work. The economic consequences of this global "norm" are approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity”

Keeping in mind the NZ economy is about $USD200BN, that is staggering.

The article talked about the key traits of high engagement companies being:

Having a shared Mission – employees have a clear sense of where they are going and why and feel like they are on a journey together. 

People Development - Hire and set them up for success. Care for them, share information with them, build a plan for them, coach both strengths and weaknesses, and provide meaningful feedback.

Valued Voice: Trust between co-workers and leaders is so high that both sides are open to communicating ideas and information to avoid problems and create new solutions

Earned Trust & Benevolence: They live their core values both internally and with the external market rewarding those who demonstrate them and not tolerating those who don’t. The customer base and employees genuinely believe that the company has their best interests at heart.

It got me thinking about farming

And in particular- how engagement levels have been lowered by financial stress (albeit now improving) and now increasing compliance - something highlighted in KPMG’s recent Agribusiness agenda with the following statement “ a sector that is fatigued, straining to cope with the wide range of issues that is having to respond to on a day-to-day basis with morale falling”.

So, what does engagement have to do with succession?

Well, everything we say.

Knowledge is power.

With that quote deeply in mind, we are proud to introduce the "NZAB Agri Bank Dashboard".

It's a quarterly snapshot on all bank movements, with source data from RBNZ.  

Why is this important? 

Well, understanding the forces at play in each bank gives us very strong direction on how we help our farmers more easily access capital, who from, plus the likely costs of that funding.

It also saves time for our farmers and puts energy into the right parts of your credit process, rather than chasing shadows in an increasingly complex world.    All of this so you can focus on what you do best- running your own strategy and your business effectively.

We'd love your feedback. 

Anything that you think might be useful, we'd love to hear from you!

We'll add to this dashboard over time - including things like a bank appetite index (diving deeper into each banks metrics for viability and security assessment). 

We'll put this out quarterly from here.

The version below is with data to the 31 March 2021.

The interest cost that you pay as a farmer is one of the biggest costs on farm that you will face. It is right up there with your feed/grazing bill and your wage bill. Suffice to say, it should demand your attention.

We are in a great period, with farmers enjoying some of the lowest rates ever.

However, whilst those rates have dropped substantially over the last few years, the range of rates being offered to different farmers in the market is now incredibly wide versus history.

Farmer A could easily be paying double that of Farmer B.

Within that we are also seeing some significant change in the components that make up your interest rate and can see some interesting movements coming up as bank appetite shifts into the positive territory.  

How you take advantage of that will require a specialised approach.           

Firstly, lets start with what makes up your interest rate.

To illustrate, let’s narrow this discussion to only floating rate lending.

Your floating interest rate is made up of three things - The underlying “base indicator”, the banks’ “liquidity costs” and the banks “customer margin”.

It’s that time of year when we’re finalising budgets for FY 22 and the ultimate question on all dairy farmers lips is: “what payout do we use for budgeting next year?”  

It is a much different landscape entering into FY 22 than it was in FY 21.   This time a year ago we were knee deep in COVID-19 and incredible uncertainty was evident in all parts of the world economy.  A common trend amongst most bank economists were milk price forecasts leading with $5 in front of it. When Fonterra finally delivered their opening forecast of $6.00+, it was met with mild jubilation (albeit noting the very wide range offered).

What a turnaround it has ended up being. At $7.60, being the current mid-point (milk only) with a sense of some upside potential, its going to be the second equal payout of all time.

As you know we are very interested in the “why” when banks show differing levels of appetite in the Agri Sector.  

By understanding the “why” from a bank perspective allows farmers to better understand how they should navigate their credit and negotiation processes with their bank.

Knowing this allows our farmers to more effectively separate their strategy from what is good for their business and what is good for their bank which can, at times, be quite different things.

This short article looks at the impact of differing bank strategies since 2007 when lending took off quite aggressively in the Agri sector with the first “whole milk powder boom” and the very challenging volatility that followed.

These first graphs show how much capital each bank has leant to the Agri Sector (in total), since 2008.