For most New Zealand dairy teams, the bank is a gatekeeper you call once a year for the annual loan renewal discussion. But what would change if they were a more interconnected part of the farm team? Neer Enterprises made that change.
When a significant change hits any farming business, it’s not long before the bank needs to be brought in. What follows will look very familiar: explaining the situation, providing the background, a bit of back and forth on the numbers, and waiting for a response.
There’s no denying the process works. But, it takes time that farming decisions don’t always allow. And it often leaves the bank playing catch-up—which can further delay critical decisions.
Neer Enterprises, a family-owned dairy operation in the Wairarapa, has formed a different relationship with their Westpac banker, Charlie. Here’s how it works.
For most NZ dairy farms, the current banking relationship isn’t much more than an annual discussion, with the occasional spontaneous catch-up when something happens that needs financing.
This functions more like a service arrangement than a genuine working relationship. While farmers might be familiar with their banker, even friendly, they’re an outsider to the farm team which has to be called in when needed.
In modern farming, this has two big limitations:
Speed. When a decision needs to happen quickly, the bank has to be brought up to speed before the conversation can start. They’ll require the background, any context, all the documents…by the time they’re ready to respond, even if it’s great advice, the window may have already closed.
Shallower understanding. A bank that only sees your business at formal review points is a bank that only understands your balance sheet. It doesn't know your plans, your priorities, or what you're about to do. That limits what they can offer—and what they'll be willing to approve.
With the real-time farm data now available to NZ dairy teams, this doesn't have to be the case. In fact, bringing your banker into the team doesn’t take much effort—and it has a lot of benefits to offer.
A good banking relationship should enable smooth access to capital, while offering market and credit perspectives that inform smarter financing conversations.
The good news is that building that kind of relationship doesn't require a new banker or a special arrangement. It requires two things: more contact, and more openness.
In practice, that means scheduling your banker into the meetings that already exist—giving them a seat in the conversation before a decision lands. It means granting read-only access to live farm financials, so they're never making lending decisions on out-of-date information. And it means picking up the phone when something changes, rather than waiting for the formal moment.
When that becomes the default, the bank stops being a gatekeeper you manage and starts being a part of the advisory crew—one that can respond faster to new opportunities, work through challenges before they compound, and bring their own perspective on what's working across similar operations.
Learn more: Handling Geopolitical Risks as a New Zealand Dairy Team
Neer's banker at Westpac, Charlie, is invited to three family meetings a year. He sits through the full agenda, learning what the business is doing, what it’s planning, and where it’s going.
When it’s time to talk about financing, there’s no setup process required. Charlie may well have been in the room when it was discussed the first time, so he already has the full context and a good picture of Neer’s finances.
In fact, Neer chair Rob Steele leaned on this relationship recently when one of the farm's sharemilkers decided to move on to buy their own farm. Here, a few conversations had to happen relatively rapidly, on bringing on a contract milker, financing a herd, and talking about new equipment.
So he went to Charlie.
“We asked, ‘This is what we’re thinking, what do you think?’ You know, and it’s so much easier and more refreshing to actually have a conversation rather than a formal type discussion,” said Rob. “We need that as well, but it just makes business, I won't say always fun, but it's a heck of a lot more satisfying than sitting there trying to work it all out yourself.”
Adding Charlie to Neer’s regular financial rhythm—alongside agri adviser Brett Wooffindin from Sidekick Rural—has had four major benefits:
"The openness we have with our bankers is really helpful,” Rob said, “because if you want to know something, or if you want to discuss something, you're not having to go through a whole big setup. They already have the background, and you can start talking quite quickly—in fact, very quickly—about what the issue is and what advice we're looking for."
One more thing Rob said neatly summarises the main takeaway of this article:
"If you don't tell people stuff, and then expect them to somehow know, that's a really good way of having an exercise in frustration for everybody."
At Neer, that applies across the whole farm team. With Charlie, it means sharing what’s happening in the business—not just the numbers, but the plans, the concerns, and things being considered. It also extends to the family's relationship with adviser Brett Wooffindin, who can provide better, faster advice because he’s a member of the team, not an extension of it.
Information gaps slow everything down. They slow down financing decisions when the bank needs background before it can respond. They slow down advisory conversations when the adviser lacks the context to provide timely advice. They slow down decisions that should take hours into ones that take weeks.
Rob and Brett recently sat down with us to talk about their partnership, where it came from, and the specific structures and steps that make it a success. Learn more about these by downloading our free guide, “Navigating the Road Ahead: A Guide to Building Proactive Advisory Teams in NZ Dairy.”
Or catch up on the full webinar here.