Smartcover Finance's HR Solution

Industry

Consumer finance

Products

Location

Auckland

“AdviceLine was also really helpful for my operations manager, who hadn’t done a PIP either, and educated us about the proper procedure to ensure we were presenting it correctly and having regular meetings,” Bagnall says.

He was even inspired to feed his company’s website content into ChatGPT to try to improve the quality, but also to better align it with the company’s values and strategy.

Overview

After taking over car repair financing roadside-assist business Smartcover during the Global Financial Crisis, Dan Bagnall realised he needed some help in the HR department. His accountant suggested that, for a small business such as his, the EMA would be able to fill the gap. It ended up being “the ace up his sleeve”.

The Need

Dan Bagnall took over Smartcover Ltd after his partners couldn’t see a way to profitability in the automotive repair industry during the economic doldrums caused by the Global Financial Crisis.

In his early 30s, Bagnall took the leap of faith in his own abilities, taking on the company for a nominal $1.

Soon after, a visit to the vet with his Labrador, Sky, resulted in a business-growth opportunity. After being quoted between $5000-$8000 for vet treatment, he asked the vet whether they offered finance. When he discovered they didn’t, he set about creating and designing a finance product that suited the veterinary industry’s front-of-house practices and their customers’ needs. This was the first time a bespoke finance product was designed around a vet clinic’s needs.

The trial quickly snow-balled into a successful finance product and VetCare Finance and Smartcover Finance Ltd were born.

Car repairs, vet bills and healthcare now form the backbone of a successful finance business that now employs a team of six.

Bagnall had some exposure to staff management during his previous career as a site manager in the building industry, but he realised he needed help with the day-to-day demands of HR and payroll as the business grew.

On the advice of his accountant, he took out a one-year subscription with the EMA.

The Solution

Initially, Bagnall found the EMA’s AdviceLine service useful for general help with the likes of holiday pay and took advantage of the EMA’s library of forms and documents for up-to-date employment contracts.

However, AdviceLine came into its own when he encountered one of the problems that can derail a small business that is looking to grow – an underperforming team member.

At the suggestion of AdviceLine, he downloaded a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) template, to set targets and help the staff member progress.

However, when the situation with the staff member deteriorated further, he found AdviceLine crucial in navigating personal grievance issues: what to do, how to communicate effectively with the staff member and canvas other affected staff.

“The whole time this was happening, I was on the phone to the advisory and they were helping me through the process, step by step,” Bagnall says.

It was the EMA’s advice that helped avoid costly and drawn-out legal proceedings and meant he could get back to the business of providing financial solutions for his customers.

Future of Work

The EMA has a focus on helping member businesses prepare for future challenges and opportunities and Bagnall took the opportunity presented by its Future of Work series to skill up on ways to automate processes at Smartcover Finance.

His lenders work to check that applications are compliant with Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act and Anti-Money Laundering rules, but he wondered if there was a way to use artificial intelligence to streamline this work.

Thanks to information gained from the EMA’s recent AI Show, he’s been talking with software providers to work on upgrading his systems.

He says it will help with the scalability of the business and allows him to free his lenders from time-consuming work that an automated system could carry out.

He was even inspired to feed his company’s website content into ChatGPT to try to improve the quality, but also to better align it with the company’s values and strategy. Within the space of two to three weeks, he improved his search engine optimisation and Google ranking.

Pain Points

With the EMA being an organisation that goes into bat for its members, we have to ask the question: What more can we do for you?

For Bagnall, he’d like to see more advocacy to find immediate solutions to the critical issues of food and fuel prices.

They are the key pain points he sees for many of his customers. The other is the rise of and ease of online gambling.

He believes more government intervention is needed.

“I’ve had to decline loans because the customers’ bank statements showed they were sometimes drawing $200-300 week for online gambling. The ease of gambling they can do over their phones is deeply concerning.”