The future of Banking has started

As we round out the year, I want to thank all of our customers and industry professionals for your support. This year has been really full on, but at the same time incredibly rewarding.

Some highlights from this year:

• We hit $6.5bn of loan applications since NZAB's inception.
• We hired our 40th employee.
• We welcomed 8 new employees as shareholders, meaning nearly half of our team are now owners in the business.
• We saved close to $12.5m of interest per annum for our customers this year. That's over and above movements in the OCR!
• We were one of three parties to represent farmers at the Primary Production Select Committee on Rural Banking, and have already seen many of our suggestions gaining more momentum within government and industry.
• We placed nearly $200m of lending transactions with non-bank lenders, with another $400m of transactions on the go!

Where to in 2025 and beyond?

The agriculture sector still needs increasing capital investment in the coming 10 to 15 years in order to ensure that we:

• maintain our competitive advantage internationally,
• meet our environmental obligations, and
• enable the transition (sale) of farms between generations.

But alongside this, we still have a heavily regulated banking sector that is resulting in:

• Higher interest rates charged to farmers to derive better capital ratios
• Reducing head count of bank staff
• Reduction in risk appetite for Agricultural loans

While this year has seen some good improvements in margins and appetite, the net result for farmers is still less competition, higher interest rates, decreasing viability, and an inability to access the right long-term capital for their business.

We see a significant ‘funding gap’ opening up over the coming years where farmers are unable to access the capital needed to meet these future needs.

Our desire to bring more solutions to the market to fill these gaps has only increased and we now have the ability to source capital from many different non-bank sources.

This means that good ideas that don't necessarily fit the traditional 'box' can now become a reality. 

When we nail this, the farming sector will continue to grow further as the powerhouse of the New Zealand economy, and become reinvigorated with the next generation of talent kicking down the door to get involved because they see real viable pathways.

So there is a lot to look forward to next year! To our readers, thanks for your regular feedback. We love getting your thoughts and insights. We also appreciate all of you that forward our emails on and encourage more people to sign up. 

Have a great Christmas, and see you out there in 2025!