Civic Financial Services Strategic Finance Forum

Raymond re-joined Taituarā in June 2014 as Sector Improvement Manager, before commencing his current role as Chief Advisor at Taituarā. He has spent most of the last 20 years in local government related roles, most recently with the Department of Internal Affairs.

He describes his job as two-thirds providing assistance to the local government sector and one-third providing advice to central government on local government matters. His ambition is to help develop a Local Government Act that doesn’t require changes every 18 months. He asks that you wish him well with this task.

Hillmarè Schulze is the Chief Economist at BERL. She draws on her experience, being a practising economist for more than 30 years across the globe. She has worked in multilateral and bilateral organisations, private and government sector. She is currently heading BERL, and values the credible and independent voice that the team brings to the economic and policy dialogue in New Zealand. BERL has been in business for more than 60 years, and prides itself on being a private economic consultancy, supporting central and regional government, private companies as well as various Māori and iwi entities by providing a credible evidence base and economic analysis to support good decision-making. She is a strong supporter of regional economic development, the Māori economy and making sure that the next generation has the tools to be productive global citizens.

Prior to joining BERL, Hillmarè worked for Te Puni Kōkri and the then Department of Labour. She moved to New Zealand in 2016, from the World Bank, where she worked as a senior economist focussed on 47 African countries.

She believes that economic development is a means to an end, and definitely not the end itself. Economic development should support families and communities to grow and thrive.

Konrad started at BERL as a Research Economist, before advancing to Econometrician. His areas of expertise are modelling and describing economic phenomena, and maintaining BERL’s Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model.

At BERL Konrad has gained much expertise and passion for measuring social impacts and new ways of understanding how to communicate value.

Konrad's skills:

• Formal econometric modelling skills including different methods of regression analysis, CGE modelling, as well as methods taken from other areas of data science
• Impact mapping and Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology, including stakeholder engagement and SROI standards
• Communicating insights from complex modelling tailored to the audience, able to distil the findings into meaningful narrative
• Innovative solution finding skills, comfortable taking parts of multiple different methodologies and combining them in a useful way.

His experience includes:

• Open Polytechnic of New Zealand (OPNZ) Key Performance Indicators and Students to show how OPNZ impacts labour market outcomes
• Social renting to housing independence, demonstrating how housing tenure affects multiple social, health, and economic outcomes
• Earnings and wealth accumulation from following different pathways – regression (using a Support Vector Machine approach) modelling analysis/forecast and construction of an accounting model.

Outside BERL, Konrad has a strong interest in decentralised systems and crypto. He contributes economic insights to Bitfwd, and also enjoys video games.

Mike is a partner in Simpson Grierson’s local government and environment group, and leads the local government team with Jonathan Salter. He specialises in local government and environmental law, with a particular focus on the regulatory functions of local government (including under the RMA), and its decision-making and governance obligations and requirements. He regularly represents local authorities in relation to RMA matters (including before the higher courts), and has appeared before a number of other specialist tribunals and Council hearings on specific strategic and regulatory matters.

Matthew is a senior associate in Simpson Grierson’s local government team. He specialises in local government law with a particular focus on local government funding and financing issues, including rates and development contributions. Matthew’s experience includes advising local authorities on their consultation obligations, annual and long-term planning processes, rating and funding issues and commercial contracts. He regularly on decision-making processes, conflicts of interest, CCOs, local elections, official information, delegations and bylaw issues.

Anthony heads the team supporting the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board (NZASB) at the External Reporting Board (XRB) in its role of developing and issuing accounting standards for New Zealand entities who report in accordance with GAAP.

Anthony has over 17 years of professional accountancy experience, providing audit, internal audit, and business advisory services across the for-profit, not-for-profit and public sector.

Prior to joining the XRB, he held senior leadership positions at his predecessor firms providing assurance and technical advisory services, specialising in IPSAS™ and IFRS implementation and interpretation.

Anthony has been the Technical Advisor to the New Zealand Board member on the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) from March 2016.

Anthony is also a member IR4NPO Technical Advisory Group who are developing the world’s first internationally recognised guidance for not for-profit organisations.

Jordan Hughes joined Ibis in 2009 as an Implementation consultant/trainer, and moved into the Product Manager role during 2014, responsible for the financial modelling products in the Ibis suite of software.

Through his time consulting across Australia and New Zealand Jordan has gained extensive experience personally working with over 100 Councils. With a good level of knowledge of the rating legislation for all the different territories Jordan has also expanded his knowledge of local government rating complexities through working on such projects as Amalgamation impact studies, legislation review projects, Special Rates Variations and many other Rating review projects.

Mark has been the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Local Government Funding Agency since 2014 and his prior role was Treasurer at Auckland Council. 

Formerly he held senior financial market trading and sales roles with domestic banks and in the institutional wealth management sector as Chief Investment Officer at Perpetual Capital and General Manager of Alliance Bernstein.  

Mark currently holds investment governance roles including Chair of New Plymouth Perpetual Investment Fund, Chair of Waikato-Tainui Investment Committee and a member of the Nominating Committee of NZ Superannuation Fund.

When he is not working you are most likely to find Mark swinging a golf club, skiing down a mountain or in a DOC hut.

Brett has extensive local government treasury experience including treasury policy design, hedging strategy advice, and financial risk management. Brett has been a principal treasury advisor to the local government sector since 1997. Brett is principal ongoing treasury advisor to 20 regional, city and district council clients.

Brett has over 25 years treasury and financial markets experience in New Zealand and off-shore. Work experience includes ongoing corporate treasury and financial market advice to organisations that operate in the funding, investment, interest rate and foreign currency markets.

Brett has been a partner in PwC’s treasury advisory team for 5 years and before that was a one-third owner and director of Asia-Pacific Risk Management from 2004 to 1 October 2012. From 1 October 2012, the business was merged with PwC’s business. Brett joined Asia-Pacific Risk Management in July 2004. The business became New Zealand’s leading independent corporate treasury advisory business.

Brett is an experienced corporate treasury management advisor, having headed ANZ Investment Bank's treasury risk management services unit from 1995 to 2004 and has worked within the NZ financial markets from 1996 to present.

Brett has worked in London from 1987 to 1995, primarily with Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse Financial Products and prior to leaving overseas, held positions in audit and corporate finance with Deloitte Haskins & Sells in Auckland.

Brett is a Certified Treasury Professional (CTP) of the Institute of Finance Professionals in New Zealand and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in New Zealand (CA). He has a Bachelor of Commerce Degree in Accounting and Finance from Auckland University.

I have been married for 42 years and have 4 kids and 5 granddaughters who I love to pieces.

Grew up mostly in Palmerston North in Highbury attending Takaro, Monrad and Palmerston North BHS. Then joined the National Bank in Palmy straight out of high school in December 1977.

I had spent 40 years with the Bank being shifted all around NZ and held senior executive roles with the Bank which was taken over by the ANZ (the bank was my second whanau, and I loved every day of my job). My last role was GM ANZ Business Bank/ Retail and was a part of the biggest financial merger creating the biggest Bank in New Zealand.

I should have retired but wanted to help my people progress so undertook a role as Director for Māori and Pacific with MSD which I had the opportunity with working with some fantastic people.

After three years the role of CEO, Civic Financial Services Ltd was put in front of me and it just felt the right fit.

Sports crazy I represented my country in both Football and Softball in age group and had the honour of coaching the best domestic football team in NZ called Napier City Rovers. ( Liverpool supporter)

Philip has been consulting to a variety of Local Government related organizations since June 2007 in financial management and strategy, risk and asset management, financial policies and financial governance, and is a facilitator for Local Government New Zealand.

He has been the independent member on a number of Audit & risk committees and is currently the chair for three committees.

Between 1993–2007 Philip was the Chief Financial Officer and Group Manager Revenue and Finance for WBOPDC.Prior to joining WBOPDC he was a Business Services & Audit Manager with Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) in Tauranga, London and Hamilton.

Lizzy commenced her career in local government as a strategic policy analyst at the Western Bay of Plenty District Council. She then worked at a law firm in Tauranga as a resource management and litigation solicitor, with a special interest in local government issues, before joining Simpson Grierson in June 2012.

Lizzy has a particular interest and expertise in rating and valuation law, and judicial review litigation. She has represented clients at all levels of the Courts, and acted for the councils in the recent high-profile judicial review rating cases.