[The Wrap] FNZ: A story which needs telling

One of the joys of what I do is the people I get to meet and speak too. Recently, it was a pleasure to spend an hour talking FNZ founder and chief executive Adrian Durham.

Durham has built FNZ into a formidable global platform business. While it looks like global domination, he tells me “I’m not allowed to use those words.”

So they are mine.

In our first story we explain what FNZ has been doing over the past couple of years; expanding from its UK stronghold into 26 jurisdictions across Europe and North America.

I recall my meetings with him at First NZ Capital’s Wellington offices way back in the early 2000s about what he was doing.

This week I asked him if he ever envisaged building the behemoth that FNZ is today.

In a word; Nope. “Not for a second.”

He tells me; “When we started this journey, we had absolutely no idea it would become this big of a company. But even three years ago, I wouldn't have realised it was going to become this big of a company. So that's continuously evolved as things have gone along.”

FNZ has is truly a global New Zealand success story but one which few people know about.

Durham is happy to be behind the scenes providing services to financial services companies around the world. In New Zealand its clients include Consilium, BNZ, Jarden (now coming together as First Cape) and AMP.

While FNZ started here and made its success in the UK it’s nice to see that in recent years it has returned its domicile from the Cayman Islands to New Zealand.

A little known fact is the company has a significant presence in New Zealand,

“We employ a lot more people in New Zealand than the standalone business would require,” Durham tells me.

“We have employees in New Zealand, many, many, many times more than the size of the business in New Zealand because it is a technology centre for our global business. In fact, it's one of the main technology centres.

“We employ three or 400 technology people across the two centres (Auckland and Wellington) that service the global build and maintain and do R&D on the global technology platform. So in that sense, it's a major centre for us. Not the only one, but one of the main ones.

The FNZ story is one which, I feel, needs to be told. Over the next wee while Good Returns will be running a series of stories telling this story. Here is the first piece.