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Women reshaping mortgage advice in New Zealand

A new generation of female finance professionals is quietly rewriting the rules of mortgage advice, bringing relationship-first thinking to an industry that’s only just beginning to reflect the clients it serves

Adrienne Begbie

Prospa New Zealand

Industry experts

Jenny Campbell

Finsure

Sue Griffiths

First Mortgage Trust

Monika Nadan

Blossum

Adrienne Begbie is managing director at Prospa New Zealand, leading the business across sales, partnerships and growth in the New Zealand market. She has nearly 20 years’ experience spanning banking, lending and small business leadership, with global experience across London, Sydney and New Zealand. Originally from Greymouth, Begbie is deeply committed to supporting SMEs and strengthening access to finance for New Zealand businesses. At Prospa, she focuses on building high‑performing teams; sustainable growth; and delivering better outcomes for customers and partners.

Prospa New Zealand

Adrienne Begbie

Heading up the New Zealand arm of one of Australasia’s largest mortgage adviser aggregators, Jenny Campbell is a familiar face to many in the NZ lending community. Having previously run the peak professional bodies in the financial adviser space, as well as a large, branded mortgage broker group, she brings a wealth of experience and is a relentless cheerleader for advisers and a champion of the power of ‘great advice’.

Finsure

Jenny Campbell

Sue Griffiths is the national strategic partnerships manager at FMT. With more than 30 years’ experience across New Zealand and Australia, she has a proven track record of sales success and relationship management. Her deep industry knowledge and commitment to excellence have helped her establish a respected and enduring personal brand.

First Mortgage Trust

Sue Griffiths

Monika Nadan is an experienced multidisciplinary lender with extensive experience in the mortgage industry. Prior to joining Blossum as a credit manager, Nadan spent over six years at Pepper Money New Zealand as a senior credit assessor, working with and building relationships with mortgage advisers across the country. Nadan was attracted to Blossum’s concept of personalised loan requirements with a three-day approval conversion based on a scripted concept, including the ability to lend to commercial and property investors under non-CCCFA requirements. Nadan joined the team to attract the attention of mortgage advisers and develop long-term relationships within the brokerage network.

Blossum

Monika Nadan

Helen Nguyen is a chartered accountant with over eight years of experience across diverse sectors, working with clients ranging from SMEs to large corporates. Throughout her career, she has developed a deep passion for supporting and scaling small and medium-sized enterprises. Leveraging her expertise in building flexible infrastructures and designing effective management systems, Helen creates environments in which businesses thrive and performance excels. Driven by a commitment to addressing a critical gap in the market, Helen founded Blossum with a clear mission: to bridge the financing gap for borrowers through flexible, tailored lending solutions while providing investors with fixed, secured income opportunities that deliver higher returns than traditional banks.

Blossum

Helen Nguyen

“We need to see more women entering the business lending space, the commercial lending space, asset funding and business funding”

Jenny Campbell, Finsure

Nobody ever told Adrienne Begbie she couldn’t do it. She did that all on her own. The problem here? “It’s my own internal voice,” said Begbie, managing director at Prospa New Zealand. “Throughout my career at Prospa, and before that at Resimac and Genworth, in very male-dominated industries, it was always: Can I do this? Do I want to go for that role? It’s not so much the barriers put up by others but the ones we put on ourselves.” This disarmingly honest admission is one that resonates among many women who have built careers in New Zealand’s mortgage and lending sector. The industry has historically been male-dominated – and in many respects still is – but one pattern jumped out at a recent NZ Adviser TV Executive Insights panel featuring the views of women who have succeeded in the finance industry. Sure, commentary from colleagues and clients can sometimes sting. But the voice that nearly stopped several of them from taking the next step was their own.

Read on

Finsure Group is one of the fastest-growing aggregators in Asia Pacific, providing maximum value and helping advisers achieve their goals. It has achieved this success by getting to know its advisers’ needs and the nature of adviser success, and by gaining an understanding of how we can support our network members to become some of the best in the industry. In speaking with its partners in New Zealand, Finsure identified the need for a holistic and comprehensive aggregation solution for Kiwis and has created award-winning services to bring to the table.

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Published 16 Apr 2026

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Helen Nguyen

Blossum

“The industry has historically been very male-dominated, and while that’s still true, it’s shifting. We’re seeing more and more women come through, and that’s really encouraging”

Adrienne Begbie, Prospa

“Women frequently bring strong communication, transparency with clients, collaborative decision-making and balanced risk assessment. Because of those traits, it creates a high level of trust, which is very critical in financial services”

Helen Nguyen, Blossum

“I’m very conscious of how powerful small comments can be. I try to create an environment where I’m encouraging people to step forward instead of waiting until they feel fully ready”

Monika Nadan, Blossum

“I’m starting to see a difference in the new generations coming through. They definitely have a better work-life balance than I have had. These young ones coming through are leading the way”

Sue Griffiths, First Mortgage Trust

Prospa is a leading fintech committed to unleashing the potential of every small business in Australia and New Zealand. It does this by developing fast, flexible, stress-free lending solutions and financial management tools that help businesses thrive. Prospa is deeply committed to making a meaningful impact on the small business community and on its people. Since 2012, Prospa has helped over 45,000 small businesses access more than $5 billion in business funding, working with over 20,000 partners, including brokers, accountants and aggregator partners, to help unlock business funding for their small business clients. In addition to its commitment to supporting SMEs, Prospa has also been recognised for its workplace practices, culture and values, culminating in its certification as a Great Place to Work in Australia, a Great Place to Work in Technology and, in 2025, a Great Place to Work for Women.

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Blossum is a New Zealand private credit and investment firm providing asset-backed lending solutions across residential, commercial and development real estate. Through its flagship fund, Blossum connects investor capital with carefully selected lending opportunities designed to deliver consistent income and strong security. Founded by chartered accountant Helen Nguyen, Blossum combines disciplined credit assessment, conservative lending practices and deep industry relationships to create reliable investment opportunities. Guided by its philosophy ‘Where Your Wealth Blooms’, Blossum is focused on building long-term partnerships and delivering stable returns through high-quality private credit investments.

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First Mortgage Trust (FMT) is an investment fund manager specialising in investments and property finance. Since 1996, FMT has been helping New Zealanders protect and grow their wealth by providing consistent investment returns. Today, the company has over $2 billion in funds under management and more than 7,500 investors nationwide. FMT also provides clients with tailored property finance through first mortgages across the residential, commercial, industrial and retail property sectors in New Zealand. FMT has offices in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch, and is continuing to grow to meet market demand.

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Monika Nadan, credit manager at Blossum, knows this feeling. When she was weighing up whether to apply for her first business development manager role, a passing comment from someone she trusted planted a seed of doubt that nearly took root.

“Gender bias today isn’t usually obvious any more,” said Nadan. “It can show up in small comments that seem harmless in the moment, but they can carry a bit of doubt underneath. Someone said to me, ‘Hey, that’s a really big step. Are you sure?’ That comment alone wasn’t discouraging in an obvious way, but it planted a seed of hesitation and nearly stopped me from applying.” She applied. She got the role. And the experience has left a mark on how she leads her team. “I’m very conscious of how powerful small comments can be,” Nadan explained. “I try to create an environment where I’m

encouraging people to step forward instead of waiting until they feel fully ready. If you wait until you’re fully ready, you might actually miss the opportunity to grow.” It’s a theme that recurs throughout conversations with senior women in the sector: the gap between capability and confidence; and the outsized role that small moments – a throwaway remark, a split-second hesitation – can play in shaping a career trajectory. What women bring to the tableSet aside the barriers for a moment because the more pressing question for the New Zealand mortgage and lending sector in 2026 is what happens when women do step forward. The answer, according to those working across advice, lending and business development, is that clients notice.

Helen Nguyen, managing director at Blossum, frames it in terms of the time horizon. While a purely transactional approach focuses on settling the loan in front of you, the strategy she sees women consistently taking is oriented around the client’s financial life over years and decades. “For a good adviser or lender, it’s not simply about settling the loan,” Helen said. “It’s about building sustainable financial structures for the client over time. Women frequently bring strong communication, transparency with clients, collaborative decision-making and balanced risk assessment. Because of those traits, it creates a high level of trust, which is very critical in financial services. When a client trusts who they deal with, they’re more likely to make better decisions.”

Jenny Campbell, country manager for Finsure in New Zealand, put it another way. “Customers getting good advice is about having great relationships,” she said. “Women really bring a very unique aspect of that. They’re great at relationship building, great at creating trust and empathy and really working together collaboratively and building deep connections with clients.” The commercial logic here is not subtle. Clients who trust their adviser return. They refer. They stay. The relational approach that women are often credited with produces pipelines, retention and referrals in an industry where all three matter enormously.

Begbie sees the shift in the industry’s gender composition as part of a longer evolution that’s still very much in progress, and she welcomes it without reservation. “As women, we bring that rapport and empathy. We make it a bit softer and build friendships for life,” she said. “The industry has historically been very male-dominated, and while that’s still true, it’s shifting. We’re seeing more and more women come through, and that’s really encouraging.”

Sue Griffiths, national strategic partnerships manager at First Mortgage Trust, pointed to the New Zealand Mortgage Awards as a visible sign of how much has changed in recent years – and a reminder of how much further the sector can go. “We’re definitely seeing even more women represented in the NZMA Awards, which is fantastic to see,” she said. “Women are now bringing part of that evolution to the market. May that continue. We’ve got a long way to go, but you’re definitely seeing significant changes.” The barriers, external and otherwiseOf course, the internal voice doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It’s shaped, at least in part, by what women encounter on their way up. And while overt discrimination has become less common, the experiences that women in New Zealand’s mortgage sector describe suggest that subtler pressures remain very much in play.

Campbell recalled a moment from earlier in her career that still lingers. “We all got very used to being often the only woman in the room,” she said. “I have a very clear recollection of some years ago being joked that I was the part-timer because I had to pick my kids up from daycare that closed at six o’clock. That hurt at the time. But I just had to be better.” Griffiths was passed over for a banking role she was qualified for, in favour of a male colleague. At the time, she turned it inward. “At the time, I thought I’d failed. But it wasn’t long after that I left banking and came into the mortgage industry, which has been amazing. You do beat yourself up, but once you have amazing people around you who back you, that brings the confidence back,” she said. Helen Nguyen, as a young woman running a finance company

in a sector that remains heavily male, has made a deliberate choice about how to respond to the commentary that comes her way. “Rather than seeing it as a barrier, I treat it as motivation,” she explained. “Without those comments, I wouldn’t be who I am today. It’s really about developing a deeper expertise in financial services and showing proof – to myself and of course to others. Rather than arguing against the bias, it’s about demonstrating consistent capability and results.”

Getting in the doorFor young women considering finance as a career, the pathway isn’t always obvious. The sector doesn’t tend to advertise itself loudly at university careers fairs, and its image can still skew male and established. Even so, a 2024 Strategi Institute survey found that female applicants for financial adviser roles now marginally outnumber male, at 52% to 48% – a striking statistic given how different the gender composition of the industry looked quite recently. The pipeline is filling. The question is how to keep it flowing. Several senior women are actively working on that, through structured programmes designed to lower the threshold for entry and give new entrants a genuine foundation rather than leaving them to work it out alone. Finsure has built two parallel initiatives under Campbell’s leadership: a women’s network open to anyone considering a career in finance, and a newly launched adviser academy that provides a structured learning pathway into the profession.

“We have a very structured programme, all about women in finance, which I’m so proud of,” said Campbell. “We have a group called Women in Finsure where we get together regularly for networking and support. It’s not just for advisers; it can be for lenders, loan support officers, administrators, any young woman who thinks she might want a career in finance. And when they do want to become an adviser, we’ve just launched our new adviser academy – a really lovely, structured programme to help anyone who wants to become an adviser learn how to do it properly.” First Mortgage Trust is similarly focused on building a graduate pipeline. Griffiths is clear about where she thinks the sector needs to invest its energy: “We need to get into universities and show young people that these are really profitable and great businesses to be in. There’s lots of opportunity. At FMT, we offer internships and take graduates as well – we’re really keen to foster these people through to great careers.”

Begbie sees the aggregators and industry bodies as having a critical role in bringing new talent through, particularly as the sector positions itself for the recovery she believes is coming. “A lot of the aggregators have programmes to bring in young graduates,” she said. “But it’s also about aligning yourself with a coach, with people like ourselves or other advisers out there, and learning from experience. “At Prospa, we’re passionate about supporting that development and helping young talent learn from those who’ve been in the industry. It’s not just about surviving but thriving. There are a lot of moving parts, and I’m excited to see the next generation come through.”

Nadan makes a point of networking with people to get ahead. “Get to know everyone and ask around,” she said. “Women are too scared to put their best foot forward. If you have trusted networking connections, just ask them: ‘I’m looking for a career change. Do you know anyone? Can I get some work experience?’ It’s just giving yourself the confidence to apply and do it.” The burnout questionMore women entering the industry is unambiguously good news. Keeping them there is a different challenge and one that requires some honesty about the pressures that accumulate when a demanding professional role sits alongside the reality of life outside work. Begbie was candid about the shape of that pressure. “Burnout is a real thing,” she said. “You’re working, you’ve got kids, you’ve got home life, and we still tend to carry a lot of that load. It’s about asking for help, making the kids step up and supporting each other. For a lot of women, myself included, asking for help doesn’t come naturally, but it matters.”

Griffiths takes a longer view and finds genuine reason for optimism in what she sees in the generation now entering the workforce. “I’m starting to see a difference in the new generations coming through. They definitely have a better work-life balance than I have had,” she said. “These young ones coming through are leading the way.” The shift goes beyond attitude, Griffith added. It shows up in how younger couples are dividing responsibilities at home in ways that were far less common a generation ago. “I’m very proud of my daughter,” she said. “She’s back at work full-time with twin girls, and she and her husband share everything. I don’t know whether some of the men in previous generations would cope with that, but these young ones are definitely showing us how it’s done.”

The opportunity aheadThe near-term commercial story for New Zealand’s mortgage and lending sector is one of nascent recovery. Interest rates are easing, activity is picking up, and the advisers who have built strong client relationships through the lean years are well placed to capitalise. For women in the sector, the timing coincides with a structural shift in where financial decision-making sits within New Zealand households – and with a set of emerging opportunities in business and commercial lending that remain significantly underdeveloped. Helen Nguyen pointed to a shift in the way female clients themselves are approaching financial decisions and sees it as an opening for advisers who can meet them where they are. “Women now, compared to how they used to be, are more conservative in their spending habits. They look at what’s going in and out a lot more,” she said. “With that, they do actually provide that advice to their customers, to give them better navigation around uncertainty and spending habits and how they can overcome tough times.” Campbell was more direct about where she sees the gap. “We need to see more women entering the business lending space, the commercial lending space, asset funding and business funding,” she said. “With the relationship-building that women do so well, and with more women in business themselves, there’s a huge opportunity to expand their portfolios and become real experts in the business and commercial sector.”

often be quite significant sums. Financial literacy for women is going to become so much more important than it has been previously.” Griffiths added that the rise of AI, often framed as a threat to administrative and support roles, may in practice push more women towards client-facing and advisory work where their strengths are most valued. “There’s a lot of uncertainty around AI taking those admin jobs,” she said. “Hopefully that’ll push women forward into roles in business and asset lending. They’ve got the skill set, the empathy and the connection with customers – and that’s the most valuable thing.” The reality is that very few people are willing to trust AI with major personal financial decisions. A recent survey in Australia showed that, when asked how they’d research loan options, 32% of people said they would be comfortable going to a mortgage broker, while only 6% would choose an AI-powered digital assistant to compare, apply for and manage a loan.

Begbie is bullish, framing the current moment as one that demands action rather than deliberation. “The opportunities and the relationships we’ve built over the years have been incredible,” she said. “The economy is turning, the opportunities are out there, and now is the time for advisers to work closely with businesses like Prospa, alongside other referral partners, to really seize those opportunities and flourish.” For women still weighing up whether a career in financial advice is for them, Campbell offered a pitch that is hard to argue with. “It’s one of the few [jobs] where there truly is no gender pay gap – every reward you get as an adviser, you have earned yourself,” she said. “I would just encourage any young woman thinking about a career in finance to reach out, because it’s a wonderful industry to be in.”

More women beginning financial adviser careers in New Zealand

Source: Strategi Institute survey, 2024

Ratio of female to male applicants for financial advice training:

52% 48%

People not confident leaving loan advice to AI

Source: Agile Market Intelligence survey, August 2025

Only 6% of Australians would be comfortable using an AI-powered digital assistant to compare, apply and manage their loan

Begbie echoed that view and sees the opportunity extending well beyond any single lender or product type. “There’s a real opportunity for advisers to support their customers across the full range of products available,” she said. “That might be Prospa for business lending, other lenders for asset finance, or partners for insurance. It’s about diversity of solutions and being a trusted adviser who can support customers end to end.” Looking further out, Campbell pointed to research on intergenerational wealth transfer as another reason why the financial literacy of women – both as clients and as advisers – is set to become an increasingly significant issue for the sector. “There’s a massive intergenerational wealth transfer coming,” said Campbell. “It’s often the eldest daughter in a family who ends up looking after elderly parents’ finances, and these can

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