With nod to past, Attvest positions for future success

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Attvest Finance is not only scaling but also strategically retaining its core values and dedication to broker relationships, ensuring long-term sustainability and continued innovation in premium funding

ONE OF the longer-term dangers for any new company is a gradual fading of hungriness due to early success in the startup phase. In some ways, it’s a nice problem to have because it means the firm’s chosen formula has worked to such a degree that complacency has become a realistic possibility. Attvest Finance chief commercial officer Nick Cunningham recalls when it was still a mad scramble for business at the premium funder, which launched exactly 10 years ago. “As a startup, the majority of effort early on was invested to raise sufficient capital,” he says. “We started out of our managing director’s house, so something as simple as setting up the cables to get internet

Attvest Finance is the fourth-largest insurance funder in Australia, providing over $1.4 billion in funding in the last fiscal year. With a network of 700 brokers and authorised representatives, Attvest has helped clients improve working capital and cash flow since it launched as a startup in 2014. Its focus is on premium funding, and it recently launched ATTassist debt collection, ATTpay payments and BiiGGA merchant cash advance services in 2022.

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Quick facts about Attvest Finance

Launched as a startup

“The success that got us to where we are now … we can’t lose that unrelenting desire to support our business partners – being brokers”

Nick Cunningham, Attvest Finance

access was a challenge. [Everyone] was marketing manager, collections officer, IT manager, operations manager and cleaner – people were doing every job.” These days, cleaning duties and worrying about the firm’s cash flow aren’t things that Cunningham needs to think about on a daily basis. “The business has got momentum, sustainability and size, and that’s not an issue any more.”

“It’s about ensuring that everything we do creates value for the broker, everything we do saves a resource for the broker, everything we do is solving a problem for them when it comes to premium funding.” Making the lives of brokers easier was a central motivational tenet that drove both the establishment of Attvest and its early market successes, and Cunningham wants to keep this mindset front and centre through the campaign. “As you get bigger, you’ve got to want to continue to keep that DNA,” he says.

Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati describes the successful transition from startup to a mature company as a process that involves recognising and preserving the ‘soul’ of the firm – something that encapsulates strategic business intent, a strong connection to customers and a good employee experience. Perhaps corporate ‘soul’ is one way to describe #WNLAB. The campaign revolves around being useful to brokers and recognising their value in the premium funding proposition. “The idea of ‘we never lose a broker’ is that everyone across the organisation understands how important it is to maintain that relationship so that a broker wants to continue to deal with us. We don’t want to put a broker in a situation where they choose not to deal with us because of how we’ve dealt with them. We want to continue to give brokers reasons to be with us and stay with us, and we don't want our success and our growth to be our Achilles heel,” says Cunningham.

happened, although the impact is on the broader company. So now we have to make sure we don’t make decisions in silos. “The business has been successful because people chose to trust us when we were a startup. As we go forward, we don’t want to become a business that says, ‘well, this customer is no longer valuable to us’. Every single broker we have is valuable to us.” Putting brokers at the heart of the equation helped Attvest get through one of its greatest challenges – the COVID lockdowns. “Many of our competitors made changes which impacted not only the broker but also the borrower – those changes were to restrict the conditions of lending – whereas we didn’t. “[We saw that] we still needed to stay open for business at that point in time, when the broker needed a funding partner and the client needed access to capital. We didn’t make changes that restricted that, and that had a significant impact on allowing us to raise the awareness of the company and show the type of DNA that we have as an organisation.”

slowdown] … it’s really when our product comes to the fore; it grows much more when there is strain within the economy.” The appeal for brokers during a downturn is the immediate positive impact on their fiscal situation when the debtMAN goes to work. “Within the first month, on average we are reducing the outstanding debtors of brokers signing up for the service more than 50% … I won’t say rectified entirely, but they are improved significantly – brokers are able to get paid the money they’re due for the work they did. “Our competitors look at it like all we’re here to do is provide a premium funding solution – we’re not. We’re actually here to help the broker get paid and help their bottom line by finding a method to pay that insurance premium. If they take our premium funding, great. If they don’t, we’ll still help with that process.”

Abstract hand holding red paper plane with businessman and telescope on chalkboard wall background.

Keeping the early mindset alive

More growth likely amid economic uncertainty

Published 15 Jul 2024

“Within the first month, on average we are reducing the outstanding debtors of brokers signing up for the service more than 50% … I won’t say rectified entirely, but they are improved significantly”

Nick Cunningham, Attvest Finance

2014

Number of employees

Number of programmers on IT team

Number of affiliated brokers and authorised representatives

700

Amount of premium funding provided last FY

$1.4bn

Estimated size of premium funding market in Australia

~$11bn

Source: Attvest Finance

Cunningham is now focused on a different challenge. It’s a challenge that’s an inherent part of the business cycle: as a startup accelerates forward in a higher gear, what needs to be kept from the early days and what should be lost? “We recognise as a startup you make decisions to basically get every bit of business you can because you’ve got to survive in that sense. And the success that got us to where we are now … we can’t lose that unrelenting desire to support our business partners – being brokers,” he says. At the end of June, Attvest launched its ‘We Never Lose a Broker’, or #WNLAB, campaign in recognition of the crucial contribution of brokers to the premium funder’s past, present and future success.

The ethos behind #WNLAB is being woven into Attvest’s corporate identity by educating those who don’t have first-hand experience of the startup period. “[When] an employee joins, on day one we tell them, this is part of our culture. We find a way to deal with problems; we don’t run away from the issues, we run towards them.” A common problem as a company grows is a loss of communication and cross-pollination across different divisions as each limb of the firm expands and subtly diverges from the startup’s original mission and vision. “Often, as you get bigger, you get silos and start to make decisions [where other people in the firm] don’t necessarily know what’s

A strategy for long-term success

One of the key insights that drove the founding of Attvest was the realisation that there was no need to wait for the insurance market to be ready before introducing technological innovations. “[Managing director Johan Steyn] saw that more people wanted to access the product, but there was no real product innovation or system innovations happening,” says Cunningham. “[He] saw an opportunity to create a business that was focused on relationships … while also ensuring that it had innovation within the DNA of the company to create an environment where the relationships were face to face but the way that you interacted with us was through better systems.” Leading the market with innovation is a key part of Attvest’s corporate DNA, alongside having brokers at the centre of the model. This much can be seen in later innovations such as the ATTassist products and the (debtMAN) debtor management system.

Innovating ahead of the market curve

“[We are] heading into an economic environment where we’re seeing more and more clients having to prioritise what they’re paying and the bills they pay,” says Cunningham. “We notice brokers have to allocate more resources to compliance and to collect overdue payments from clients. To assist in this regard, we have developed a service, debtMan ... to help bring the monies owed to the broker faster. We provide the broker the ability to outsource this function to us, and we’re seeing a higher uptake for this service.” Attvest is currently seeing the number of loans it provides to the market grow by around 40% year-on-year. “The need for our product increases [during economic

Helping brokers do their jobs through innovative solutions requires a constant challenger-brand mindset. Attvest is moving ahead with plans to help brokers ride out any turbulence and expects higher demand for its services in the months ahead. “Our obligation is to continue to allow the business to grow to support more small businesses and their needs as the economy slows,” says Cunningham. This involves close communication with brokers to stay ahead of the problems they are having. “We’re constantly asking the brokers, ‘What’s troubling you in your world? What are the problems you’ve got?’” One problem area that Attvest aims to alleviate through innovation is the time lag between quote and approval during a loan application. Another is clients’ desire for more autonomy when dealing with debt payments. To that end, Attvest has recently introduced a customer service portal where those who have fallen behind on their payments, for example, can manage the situation entirely online. The traditional approach requires a call to an office to talk through the situation and reach a solution, but that is not what most customers want. “[Customers] would prefer to deal through a technology platform than deal with someone face to face,” says Cunningham. “They [want to] do it in their own time frame. They don’t want to have an interaction. [Using our customer service portal] they’re able to fix it up without having to deal with someone, and we’ve seen a significant uptake in that.”

Keeping the challenger fires burning

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