From shire models to the independence question

Mandate

Establish whether the bank should remain independent, and on what evidence, and direct investment accordingly.

Outcomes

• Recommended declining a 2023 merger approach and designed the standalone test the board adopted
• Replaced a three-branch urban overlap with a five-year commitment to four western branches
• Opened a regional broker channel that lifted mortgage growth from 1.8% to 6.1%
• Led the business case for the A$15.2 million digital platform replacement

Decisions in context

The chief executive created this role with a single question attached: should Kalverrin stay independent? My answer has been conditional. I recommended declining the 2023 merger approach and wrote the test that will tell the board whether that was right. I also run the strategic investment portfolio, deciding with the executive committee which projects receive the A$9 million available each year. The broker channel and the branch plan both came from this office, and both were contested by colleagues whose arguments I took seriously. I present to the board at each strategy session and to the risk committee when growth assumptions affect the capital plan. I do not own capital, credit or operations. My job is to make the choices between them visible, priced and dated, so the people who carry them can see what they are agreeing to. That separation keeps my recommendations honest.

Reason for the move

Current role; seeking a second non-executive appointment alongside it.

Mandate

Build a member insight function and connect it to the annual plan.

Outcomes

• Mapped members under strain after the coal downturn and shaped the hardship response
• Created the first branch study combining visits, holdings and distance
• Introduced a member survey of 6,000 responses a year
• Coordinated three annual business plans and the 2020 strategy refresh

Decisions in context

I arrived as the coal downturn was hurting members in Moranbah and Emerald, where house values had fallen sharply and some borrowers owed more than their homes were worth. My first work was to identify those members and what they needed, so that the hardship team could act before arrears grew. That research became a permanent insight function. We built an annual member survey and the first branch study to combine visits with product holdings and travel distance. I learnt that the least visited branches were often the ones members depended on most. I also coordinated the annual business plan, which taught me how the bank's divisions bargain for resources. By 2021 the chief executive wanted strategy separated from planning, with one person accountable for the independence question, and offered me the role. My successor in planning now runs the survey and branch study I started.

Reason for the move

Appointed to the newly created chief strategy officer role.

Mandate

Set portfolio limits that kept growth within what the lender's funders would support.

Outcomes

• Introduced commodity and regional concentration limits
• Reduced feedlot exposure from 19% to 12% of the book
• Built a three-year funding-capacity plan agreed with the two main funders

Decisions in context

This role taught me that growth is permitted, not chosen. Pastorvane's funders set limits on concentration and quality, and every new lending initiative had to fit inside them. I built the portfolio limits by commodity and region and reported them monthly to the chief executive. The hardest decision was reducing feedlot lending, where the lender had a strong reputation, from 19% to 12% of the book. The sales team argued we were abandoning loyal customers; the funders were concerned about concentration. We kept existing clients and slowed new lending. I also prepared the funding-capacity plan that set how fast the book could grow. By 2016 I wanted to work where the balance sheet belonged to the customers themselves, and a customer-owned bank in Central Queensland, a region I already knew well, offered exactly that.

Reason for the move

Joined a customer-owned bank to work on strategy funded by member deposits rather than wholesale facilities.

Mandate

Assess farm and rural-business credit applications and track portfolio concentration.

Outcomes

• Analysed about 240 farm and agribusiness facilities
• Introduced seasonal cash-flow testing for cotton and grain borrowers
• Produced the first quarterly concentration report for the funders

Decisions in context

I joined to learn how farm cash flows become credit decisions. I analysed applications from cotton growers, grain farms and feedlots, and the long dry years tested every assumption I made. A farm could be profitable over ten years and unable to meet a payment in the third. I introduced seasonal cash-flow testing so that facilities were sized to the worst months, not the average. From 2009 I supervised two analysts and produced a quarterly report showing where the book was concentrated by commodity and district. That report became the basis for conversations with the lender's funders and, later, for my own portfolio role. I completed a graduate diploma in applied finance part-time during this period, which gave me a more rigorous grounding in funding and capital and the vocabulary to argue with the lender's treasury team.

Reason for the move

Promoted to head of portfolio strategy.

Mandate

Measure the performance of each store and depot and model the rebate returned to members.

Outcomes

• Built the first store-by-store profitability report
• Modelled the 2003 merchandise merger proposal for the board
• Redesigned rebate modelling to show its effect on store pricing

Decisions in context

The cooperative was owned by the producers who bought from it, so every margin was also a question of fairness between members. I built the first report showing which stores and fuel depots made money and which relied on others. In 2003 I modelled a proposal to merge the merchandise business with a larger cooperative. The savings were real, but members rejected the merger because they feared losing local stores. Two years later the cooperative sold one of those stores on worse terms than the merger would have offered. I took two lessons from that: member ownership creates loyalty a competitor cannot buy, and it can also delay an honest conversation about scale. I moved into lending because I wanted to understand the financing behind the farms our members ran, and why some survived a dry run of seasons while neighbours did not.

Reason for the move

Moved into agribusiness lending to understand how farm cash flows are financed.

Mandate

Prepare economic impact analysis for regional clients.

Outcomes

• Contributed to eleven regional impact studies
• Built a shire-level model of drought effects on local spending
• Drafted the service-access chapter of a western Queensland study

Decisions in context

I started as a graduate economist writing impact studies for councils and industry bodies. The work involved models of stock numbers, wages and local spending. The most useful thing I learnt came from fieldwork. In a western shire, a bank branch had closed months before our visit, and a newsagent described driving ninety minutes each week to deposit her takings. Our model had no place for that cost, so I drafted a chapter on access to services, which the principal accepted. It was my first lesson that a financial service in a small town does work that transaction data misses. After three years I wanted to work inside a regional business rather than describe it from Brisbane. A cooperative in Emerald offered an analyst role close to the producers I had been studying, and I moved there in March 2000.

Reason for the move

Joined a producer cooperative to work inside a regional business rather than advise from outside.