Over the past 3 and half years BNZ has built a suite of banking services for Asian migrants that go beyond the transactional and into practical lifestyle assistance about settling in Auckland and New Zealand. BNZ merged Migrant Banking and Asian teams into one to enable the team to seamlessly help customers who are already living in New Zealand, as well as those who are planning on immigration in the future. BNZ’s helpful muti-lingual team is experienced in dealing with the particular financial needs of Asian and Migrant customers across the bank’s Retail, SME, Partners, Private banking and Commercial banking options. 

Raj Mehta, BNZ business acquisition manager-Indian Market, was born in India and now lives in Auckland. He is fluent in Hindi and Punjabi and is passionate about growing great business relationships and helping his customers with their banking and business needs.

What has BNZ on offer for the Kiwi Indian community? How have you been contributing to the community?

New Zealanders of Indian decent play an important and growing role in this country’s business community. To support them, BNZ has built a dedicated team delivering banking services for Asian migrants that goes beyond just banking and includes long term support and practical lifestyle assistance about settling in New Zealand. 

BNZ’s Asian Banking team is able to offer tailored support and understanding as its members are themselves migrants from different parts of Asia who have experienced the challenges new migrants face. They are able to deliver solutions in a client’s own language and cultural context as well as understanding the particular challenges and fears new migrants face in New Zealand.

For larger businesses BNZ’s Indian Banking unit is also available to provide specialist support.Some projects BNZ has worked on within the Indian community include the New Lynn Sikh Temple and the world’s biggest Sai Baba Temple. BNZ is also a key sponsor of the Indian-Business awards.

If a Kiwi Indian wants to set up a business, what are the basic requirements he/ she needs to keep in mind before approaching BNZ?

It is important to share as much as possible with your bank. The more your bank knows about your business, your goals and your opportunities and challenges, the more they are able to help you.Anyone setting up a business should have a good idea of their goals, their financial situation

and who their customers are. They should have a clear business plan including knowledge of their customers and competitors. We would also expect to see cash flow forecasts as well as financials if it is an existing business.

BNZ will partner with our business customers, providing support not just with funding but with processes, skills, networking opportunities and infrastructure and technology to support businesses on a day-to-day basis. BNZ provides specialist support to small businesses via the small business hub. Small business customers can speak via phone or video phone to a world winning small business team seven days a week between 7am and 7pm weekdays and 8am to 2pm weekends.

Larger businesses are able to utilise BNZ’s Partners Business Centres, a network of 33 business centres located across New Zealand offering meeting rooms and conference spaces, teleconferencing as well as tea and coffee.

As a part of the Migrant & Asian banking unit , what are some of the issues you usually face while dealing with customers? How do you plan to overcome such obstacles?

India has one of the most diverse range of dialects and languages in the world. We are largely able to overcome language barriers as the team includes a mix of bankers from all over India and Fiji. Those who speak additional languages are highlighted in the bank’s internal system as well as having the flag of the country where their language is spoken highlighted on their name badges. We have more than 5000 employees at BNZ so that gives us access to a lot of languages!

Moving to another country is more than just learning the language. As migrants ourselves, the migrant banking team understands that New Zealand’s housing and business environment is very different from back home.All the information about life in New Zealand such as schools, sport, how to buy a house, get a driver’s licence, is out there but it is not readily accessible. We work hard to provide a nice environment for our customers get to grips with the unique New Zealand culture and our customers appreciate that they are talking to someone who understands the process of assimilating Indian culture into New Zealand culture.

In order to customise your services, do you assign women centric roles to your female staff members when it comes to interacting with the Kiwi Indian clientele?

No we do not have woman-centric roles at BNZ. We think workforce diversity is a key driver of a high performing economy and for us, diversity is not about age, gender, style or ethnicity. It’s about unleashing the potential of each individual within our workforce. So we have a number of different initiatives internally to help our people to do that. One of them is flexible working so all our employees can perform their roles in balance with their home life.

We want all New Zealand companies to see the benefits of a diverse workforce, so in February of this year, BNZ put together a free resource for businesses to share what we have learned. We hope other businesses join us in making a conscious investment in encouraging each and every New Zealander to perform at their best in their own way.