“Ultimately, it came down to what our clients were demanding.”
Those were the words of EY New Zealand financial services leader Paul Roberts (pictured above) when he and insurance and actuarial sector leader Greg Bird (pictured below) sat down with Insurance Business to talk about the consulting giant’s newly established financial services team in NZ.
Earlier this month, EY launched a financial services organisation (FSO) dedicated specifically for New Zealand banking, insurance, and wealth and asset management clients. It consists of over 100 team members specialising in the areas of assurance, tax, strategy and transactions, people advisory services, and business and technology consulting.
“Globally,” explained Roberts, “EY has had an FSO for well over 10 years. It originally emanated out of the various financial hubs around the world – so London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, then moved into Australia. For a number of years we’ve been having conversations about setting up an FSO in New Zealand, because the clients we deal with here in insurance, banking, and wealth and asset management are largely subsidiaries of their Australian or Asian parents. Having common themes and skillsets across those was viewed as beneficial.
“The way we operated in New Zealand is we did have some financial service skilled and experienced people that operated from within what we call our core practice. And what moving to an FSO in New Zealand has done is it has enabled us to actually invest significantly in bringing in experienced practitioners from industry as well as from within our own FSO globally, as well as from other consulting practices, so people who are all focussed on financial services.”
He continued: “So, what we actually have now in terms of the 100 people is a combination of people that worked on financial services clients before within the various parts of our assurance, tax consulting, and strategy and transactions practice. But we’ve also brought in a significant number of people to actually increase the breadth and depth of skills that we have, which is where Greg comes in. Greg is our highest profile industry hire in this space, coming in as a partner to lead our insurance and actuarial practice.”
According to Roberts, who has been with EY since joining as a graduate in the assurance practice in 1993, about a third of the massive team consists of new arrivals like Bird.
The new EY partner and AMP Life alumnus came onboard the professional services group, first as executive consultant, last October. Prior to his move, Bird served as chief actuary and chief investment officer at Resolution Life Australasia.
“In New Zealand and globally, insurers are having to deliver on a fairly wide-ranging legislative and regulatory change agenda,” pointed out the key recruit. “That’s been a constant theme over the last few years and, as we would expect, it’s going to be an ongoing theme.
“I think the real benefit is there’s a lot of alignment between what insurers are wanting to focus on in terms of a transformation agenda and building out sustainable data and technology assets, and then also delivering on that regulatory and legislative change agenda. So, there’s this really strong alignment there, and that’s something that we’re seeing as a really good sweet spot for driving that transformative outcome for insurers and for financial services generally.”
“We’re building a pretty strong presence from an actuarial perspective, which really supports our insurance focus,” shared Bird, who is “really enjoying” what they do and being part of a growing roster that has strong backing from the wider business.
“Actuary is a core part of the service offering in the insurance practice, and by about the middle of the year we expect that we would have had a team of about 15 actuaries and analysts here in New Zealand across Auckland and Wellington. And that’s great to be leading a team where we’re able to grow that strongly and building fantastic talent to support our growth agenda.”
Roberts confirmed that attracting and retaining people to grow the FSO in New Zealand is what’s at the top of the agenda – a not too easy feat, though, given the challenges surrounding staffing across the board.
The financial services leader highlighted: “With the borders being closed in New Zealand for as long as they have, there’s a war for talent, as you would appreciate. We’re building a financial services practice to serve our banking and insurance and wealth and asset management clients who are also actually searching for the same skills in a very constrained market.
“So, yes, we do have significant growth ambitions, but to actually be able to achieve those growth ambitions, we need the right people with the right industry experience, and we’re fishing in a very small pond at the moment, which will hopefully improve with the borders opening up.”
Meanwhile, aside from the steady support from FSO colleagues in Australia and Asia-Pacific, one significant resource channel for EY New Zealand amid these buildout challenges is the company’s graduate programme.
“Part of the people who have come onboard are out of university and have strong statistical, mathematics, economics, science backgrounds, and are starting their actuarial qualifications and we’re supporting them in that,” added Bird, who gets a buzz out of fostering talent and helping people learn and grow both personally and professionally.
“So, that’s an important part of growing the overall resource availability to support the overall change agendas that insurers are going to be facing.”
EY is currently hiring to add to the team, which Roberts revealed is poised to grow twofold.
He told Insurance Business: “The challenge that has been put to Greg and I is to double the size of our team. What that timeframe is, I wouldn’t say the end of the year, but we have actually grown a lot. And a lot of our growth is coming from our consulting practice.
“Just to give a sense of scale, while we’ve got about a third of hires who have actually come in, our consulting practice has more than doubled in size within our FSO. So, yes, we’re looking to double in size, I would say, within the next one to two years.”
Beyond the numbers, it’s equally crucial to have the right capabilities for when clients need them.
“Another challenge,” Roberts declared, “is ensuring that we actually have the right skillsets at the right time to meet our clients’ needs. We are dealing with industries that are very fast-paced; there is a lot of things happening from a technology or digital perspective within the risk and regulatory space.
“So, we need to actually ensure we bring on the right skills, the most relevant skills, at the right time to meet the needs of our clients within the various sectors. So, all of the challenges are really around people – attracting, retaining the talent that we have, and, because we have brought a number of them all quite quickly, assimilating them into our ways of working is also a challenge.”
Lifting the lid on the decision to set up the FSO, Roberts cited demand from clients, whose feedback so far has been “very positive”.
He stated: “Ultimately, it came down to what our clients were demanding. There was a need in the market for us to provide the same sorts of services that were being provided to our clients in New Zealand that they were receiving from Australia or Asia-Pac or globally. And so, the recognition of that – that the best way to meet their needs was to actually establish an FSO in New Zealand.
“The thing that excites me most is bringing the power of the FSO globally to our clients locally. It is an amazingly globally connected practice serving some of the world’s largest banks, insurers, and wealth managers. And so, the ability to actually learn from what we’re doing offshore and bring that back to New Zealand is a great opportunity for us.”
