Adrienne Begbie: Prospa Managing Director on Labour's Future Fund

Belief that small businesses are the backbone of New Zealand but are under-served in current Government schemes. 

Labour has pledged to launch a Future Fund - that re-invests dividends from specified Crown assets into businesses and infrastructure projects.

Prospa Managing Director Adrienne Begbie told Ryan Bridge her company helps small businesses get off the ground, and it's great Labour is taking steps forward for these Kiwis. 

She says hopefully this fund gives some different kinds of investment to help businesses grow and spark up New Zealand. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To Labour's Future Fund idea two hundred million dollars in
seed funding from US taxpayers fund managed by the Guardians
of the super State owned companies' assets will be transferred
to the fund, dividends used to invest in Kiwi businesses.
Very light on detail at this point, but we're going
to Adrian Bigbie, who's managing director of prosper in zed Adrian,
good morning, Good morning, Ryan, Good to have you on

(00:20):
the show. So you help small businesses get funding. What
do you think of this?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think it's great to see. It's great to see
someone actually stepping forward for Kiwi businesses. Key businesses are
the backbone of our whole economy, so it's great to
say someone eh to come up with something that could
be potentially very good for them.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Do we know Do you even know whether any of
the businesses you work with would be eligible at this
point or is it so light on detail you can't tell.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yes, it's the eligibility that's the question, isn't it. Ryan.
I think it's light on detail, but hopefully there is
still that more comes from it. A couple of things
that they've cited though, talking about high tech startups and
community renewable energy. So you wonder how many small you know,
really small businesses that would be a focus for them.
If you're talking about a headdresser or you're talking about mum, dad, plumber,

(01:07):
so cafe, that they're not really focused on those areas.
So does that actually already point to a larger sized
business not a small business.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
We have a three hundred to four hundred million dollar
Elevate Fund already which is run by the Guardians of
Indeed super I was reading about it last night. Is
that not exactly what we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
It's very similar and there are other things around there.
There's research and development funds that they can also access,
so there's other things. But small businesses are very underserved
and the mu Zealand community and the financial community, so
that's why prosper pub businesses like us are here to
help those businesses. So major banks are they really do

(01:47):
struggle to lend people without a security so without a house,
and that's really to get into their businesses and to
help them grow. So hopefully this fund actually does give
some investment, so so different investment that can help these
businesses to grow and real you know, helped spark up
new Zealand. As we were talking about those growth numbers before.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Adrian, when we're talking about you know, the borrowing and
then the success rate of a company, how many of
them flop? Realistically, I think.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's very high percentage of businesses that flop terrible words,
maybe not survived and their person you know, in their
initial years. But we I mean pus ory a line.
So we that's what we do. We lend small businesses.
So we are the Kent Canary in the mind. We
can see what's happening in the economy and our portfolio,
our customers are performing very well. So a lot of
our use of funds we talk about it, so a

(02:36):
lot of our use of funds is for growth, is
for darting, is for marketing, is for extra stock. So
that's people that are that are getting ready for this
specic area that we're about to come into. So our
portfolio is performing very well and our customers are so
that's actually really good to see.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Adrian. Appreciate your time this morning. Adrian Bigbe, Managing director
of prosper n Z. For more from Early Edition with
Ryan Bridge, listen live to news talks that be from
five am weekdays or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,