150 Years - Now we are a Crown Entity
After more than 125 years as a government department, the Public Trust Office became an autonomous and self-funding Crown entity on 1 March 2002.
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After more than 125 years as a government department, the Public Trust Office became an autonomous and self-funding Crown entity on 1 March 2002 – now known simply as Public Trust.
We were now better able to compete in the market while staying true to our trusted legacy of helping all New Zealanders. Our former Chief Executive Pat Waite picks up the story of these formative years for Public Trust and its legacy.
At the end of the 1990s the Public Trust Office faced being sold in a similar way to many Crown entities during the decade. In late 1999, however, the new Labour coalition government changed tack. The coalition’s Alliance Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Anderton, was the Minister Responsible for the Public Trust Office, and appointed a modernisation board in 2001.
Public Trust was still operating under outdated legislation – it required an Order in Council to change the interest rate it could offer its customers – putting it at a significant disadvantage in the market.
The Public Trust Act 2001 recreated the organisation as a new Crown entity, focused on delivering on both commercial and social imperatives.
The Public Trust that came into effect on 1 March 2002 was autonomous and self-funding, with its own board, and the immediate focus was getting back to the business of trustee services and growing a sustainable trustee services business for all New Zealanders. A member of the modernisation board in 2001, the inaugural board of Public Trust in 2002, and Chief Executive from 2003 to 2007, Pat Waite was there from the start of this new chapter for Public Trust.
Thanks Pat for taking the time to talk to us about the early years of Public Trust as a new Crown entity 20 years ago…
What did you find when you got your feet under the CEO’s desk?
In the late 1990s the Public Trust Office had made a strategic decision to move into banking and financial services. As a former banker, my view was that opening savings accounts and selling life insurance wasn’t the direction we should follow, because our core business was providing trustee services. When I inherited the role of CEO, we had to unravel a lot of that [the decision to provide financial services] and return to our core business.
Early on I identified that the strategic plan for Public Trust was not known [and that] we needed clarity… a plan that everyone could understand. I travelled around the country gathering input into what everyone thought should be included e.g. what values should we as hold firm to such as “We will put customers’ interests first”, what was the environment we were operating in, what was our market share, what were customers looking for from a trustee etc? This was put into a one-page plan that could be read and hopefully understood, not like the traditional strategic plans which are usually dozens of pages. On my next visit I put the plan up on all office walls. It took two to three years for everyone to realise that this [the strategy] was serious. My aim was to instil in people that this is a valuable business that requires focus. And we have credibility and our values stand clearly. It was trying to create a cultural change.
When I went around the offices, I would say, “What can I do to help you?” In one office the team said, “We’ve had no hot water in the bathroom for a long time.” So, I’d say, “Get the plumber in and I'll pay the bill for the repairs.” In another office the photocopier had broken and they had been waiting for days for a replacement. Our IT people had it sorted in hours – it just needed a phone call to the right people to make it happen.
Together with the one-page plan, which had as its core mission: “We look after people’s property as if it were our own”, our people began to realise that the primary strategies were on reducing vulnerability and building sustainability. I sought an agreement from the board that when we did turn a profit, a percentage of that profit would be used to support our people; I sought our people’s consensus on where that should be invested, and the response was that we would like to get support to make our jobs more efficient e.g. upgraded IT systems and other systems. So, a percentage of our first year of profits in 2004 were used to reinvest in new systems, making jobs easier. That again endorsed the one-page plan, which said we are going to become sustainable, and we’ll reinvest in our future. So my first couple of years was really just investigating and starting to put in place some logic around what we did.
What other changes did you implement?
I would say to everyone, "We've got to wash our face", meaning we needed to earn so that we can operate effectively. In my view, Public Trust was often reluctant to charge appropriately for the services it provided. They’d do all this wonderful work and still charge $1,000 for an estate, when they had actually spent $10,000 worth of time. We brought into Public Trust people who helped us to better understood how to charge appropriately and to better measure the basis on how we charged. … I was trying to show everyone that “every dollar counts” which became one of our strategic responses. A daily job for me was checking on income earned that day; before long, people understood that I was watching fees earned and starting to think about where our income came from – all part of wanting to become the very best but also a viable trustee services provider. I also took responsibility to listen to all customer complaints which helped me better understand where we needed to do better. That paid dividends!!
I have to give a lot of credit to both the people we brought in and those who were already there. Public Trust’s people are an amazing group. When a customer came in and said, “Sadly, my husband has passed away,” our frontline team would say, “Listen, I'll make you a cup of tea”, tell me about your husband, what can we do to help.? Often, I would hear from customers stories of our people mowing their lawns, buying their shopping and at times helping them move house. We introduced the Thumbs Up Award to recognise those who had gone above the norm in providing outstanding customer service. Once a month I would travel to their town and be there next morning with morning tea and a Thumbs Up trophy to present to each team member.
The people who came in helped us with building our market profile and they started to build up that customer loyalty and focus as an organisation. I give great credit to the Executive team, who were committed to building a sustainable organisation.
Can you tell us about some of the new products and services?
The third development was starting to reinvent the future. An example of this was an opportunity that we identified with foreign students losing their deposits when these English teaching providers failed. We had our software people develop an online deposit scheme for private training establishments (PTEs) so that their student deposits were coming to us and being held in trust, and paid out to the providers when training had been delivered and fees were due. We protected a very large number of students and it built up to a significant business with us holding student deposits in trust – brand new business for us.
Corporate Trustee Services
I used to work in investment banking where we would look for trustees for our capital issues raising. I discovered at Public Trust very capable, experienced and skilled people. I found that in corporate trustee services (CTS), everyone came to us first asking if we would be their corporate trustee. An area of opportunity we saw was the unclaimed money that government departments were holding, like bonus bonds money and a whole range of other funds that we could become a trustee of. Whilst we didn’t achieve much of the unclaimed money, in that process of approaching government entities we enhanced our reputation as being the place to go for the best corporate trustee services.
Working with charities
We began to get excited thinking about what else we could do. What other opportunities are there to recreate a new modern trustee services provider that is quite different from anyone else.
Eight out of ten people who came to write a will with us would say, “I’d like to leave some money for charity” We developed a very good business around going to charities and saying, “Would you like to be listed on our database as a recognised charity? Then we could say with confidence that we could recommend you.” We found ourselves being associated with credible charities which we had researched to make sure that they were ones we could list on our database. In the end we had a list of about 15 or so charities that customers could leave money in their will to with confidence. The word started to get out and we began to pick up more business as a result.
New sponsorships with organisations with similar strong social values i.e. Carers New Zealand, a charity supporting carers, and the RSA.
The Poppy Partner sponsorship with the RSA supporting its Poppy Appeal was a perfect model for us because of our history of providing the wills for returned servicemen during the two World Wars we had a connection with all the RSAs around the country. It was our legacy.
Can you tell us about the board?
We had a very good board, with a good chair, Peter Taylor, who was very, very supportive and whilst always challenging us to back up our plans with good facts he gave us his backing and encouragement to keep going. Our one-page plan turned out to be a bigger plan, but it was the genesis of what we were going to do. We were going to re-invest in the future, we were going to build momentum, and improve our profitability.
What was your relationship with government?
One of our successes was having Jim Anderton as our Minister. He would ring up and say, “Hello, I’ve got an angry person here, one of your customers. I've told them it can’t be true.” And he’d often tell them the solution before they rang me, and he’d work out what we had to do. He was an amazing supporter. We would do our briefings for the Minister and we felt like he was part of our team.
So I had a good chair, a good minister, and good people. In particular, I brought back from retirement, Brian Blacktop – a former Deputy Public Trustee with a career at Public Trust spanning over 45 years and respected as one of New Zealand’s leading authorities on trustee law – to act as Advisor to the Chief Executive. He was an amazing man who had all this knowledge, and watched over me and supported me as a mentor. We had some very skilled people heading up the departments. We started developing the future leaders of the organisation, everyone on the executive team had to start thinking about their successors. And that was our journey to where I thought we were becoming much more viable.
What’s your abiding memory of your time at Public Trust?
Working at Public Trust was one of the most rewarding parts of my career, because I could see the organisation changes happening and the value we were adding to our New Zealand community. I could see what the future could be and see it returning to what it was in the past – the preeminent trustee services company. I’m very proud of Public Trust. It’s a wonderful organisation.
