The people behind Prospa NZ’s pitch
Seven years ago, Huia Manuel left a banking career spanning branch networks, lending, risk and broker distribution to help launch Prospa in New Zealand.
She had already built and sold a business of her own and had had a decade in banking across branch networks, lending, risk and broker distribution in South Australia and the Northern Territory.
The pitch from Prospa New Zealand, as Manuel remembers it, was too good to turn down. “The amazing opportunity to be part of launching a new company and product category to NZ was impossible to say no to,” says Manuel, now national sales leader at the specialist lender.
That decision put her at the centre of a small team that advocates to advisers and business owners that non-bank lending can play a valuable role in their toolkit.
Spotlight
Prospa is New Zealand’s small business online lending specialist providing market-leading capital products and solutions to help Kiwi small businesses grow and prosper. Established in 2012 in Australia and 2018 in New Zealand, Prospa ensures applications are simple and funds can be accessed within 24 hours. The firm’s cash flow products and services allow small businesses to grow and take advantage of opportunities to run their businesses or help them pay for goods and services.
Company Profile
8+
Years supporting New Zealand small businesses
$850m
Total lending
8,800+
Unique customers funded
$50,400
Average deal size
16,502
Contracts settled
Bio
Spotlight
Milestones
Company Profile
“My focus is giving people clarity and building a culture based on trust, accountability and shared purpose”
Adrienne Begbie, Prospa New Zealand
“Joining Prospa and the finance industry has been both the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge of the past year”
Ryan Dennehy-Beals, Prospa New Zealand
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Published 19 Oct 2026
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Ryan Dennehy-Beals
Huia Manuel
Adrienne Begbie
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Prospa NZ built its reputation on speed, but its team says trust, transparency and strong adviser relationships are central to its approach
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Adrienne Begbie
Managing director
26
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY
Prospa New Zealand
“You can tell the founders genuinely care about what they’ve built and the people within it, and that shows in the culture”
Fletcher Thorburn, Prospa New Zealand
Prospa NZ
1998
ADMITTED
2014
FOUNDED DENHAM BRAMWELL
Recommended in Doyles Family Law 2024
ACCOLADE
Ryan Dennehy-Beals
Business development manager
26
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY
1996
ADMITTED
2014
FOUNDED DENHAM BRAMWELL
Recommended in Doyles Family Law 2023 and 2024
ACCOLADE
Fletcher Thorburn
Business development manager
43
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY
1981
ADMITTED
2021
JOINED DENHAM BRAMWELL
Member, Property Law Section of NZLS
ACCOLADE
Huia Manuel
National sales leader
46
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY
1978
ADMITTED
2014
FOUNDED DENHAM BRAMWELL
Member, Property Law Section of NZLS
ACCOLADE
Leading Prospa’s New Zealand launch and building a trusted local team since 2019
Secured one of the UK’s largest companies as a client for a London tech startup via a board-level pitch
Drove a 230% increase in annual resale transactions on Europe’s largest single-developer scheme
Being part of the Prospa NZ story – and owning a tapas restaurant in the Adelaide Hills for five years
“The opportunity lies in how we engage and communicate so our message resonates, stays top of mind and naturally forms part of [advisers’] client conversations”
Huia Manuel,
Prospa New Zealand
Fletcher Thorburn
2019
2022
2023
2024
2025
Prospa NZ establishes operations in New Zealand; first NZ warehouse funding facility (three-year committed, NZ$45 million), enabling local lending capacity
2019
Line of Credit product (up to NZ$150,000) launched as Prospa NZ scales its cash-flow lending offering
2022
Launches first SME lending app in New Zealand, crossing the milestone of more than NZ$500 million in originations in the local market
2023
Introduces Bill Pay and expanded product features (higher line-of-credit limits, longer terms, more flexibility) to deepen its SME tools suite
2024
Line of Credit increases to $500,000, offering SMEs half a million in credit on a drawdown basis; launches dedicated app for advisers
2025
Milestones
and focused on learning about an unfamiliar industry from a standing start. “Joining Prospa and the finance industry has been both the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge of the past year,” he says. “I’ve tackled it by staying curious, asking plenty of questions and drawing on the experience of my colleagues and adviser network.”
As managing director, Begbie’s view focuses more on the broader economy.
“A key focus has been navigating changing economic conditions while supporting small businesses responsibly,” she says. One way of doing that is by strengthening adviser engagement through roadshows and digital tools.
Where to next for specialist lending? Begbie sees trust as crucial to the future of non-bank lending. “The opportunity is to build greater trust and transparency in specialist lending while helping more small businesses access funding responsibly,” she says.
She acknowledges the industry still has work to do in some areas.
“I would like to see a more transparent and customer-centred industry that uses technology to reduce friction without compromising due diligence.”
Even so, the BDMs are positive about Prospa’s future and its ability to meet any challenges. Manuel returns to the people doing the work rather than the products they sell. “I love people, building relationships and providing solutions,” she says.
Dennehy-Beals is confident the non-bank can maintain its strong position in the industry despite the accelerating changes.
“Things move at a rapid pace, but everyone is working towards the same goal: helping businesses access funding quickly while making responsible lending decisions,” he says.
Manuel’s leap of faith is not unusual at Prospa NZ – other members of the business development team arrived from industries as varied as software to real estate. The common thread is a conviction that strong relationships help advisers feel understood and supported, and that advisers who feel understood keep coming back. That conviction is what’s turning a non-bank lender into a trusted and established part of how advisers support their clients.
Choosing people over process The team at Prospa NZ consistently cites one thing as a key motivator: people.
“I am driven by people, our customers and our partners. People make the difference!” says Adrienne Begbie, Prospa NZ’s managing director. Begbie believes that business gets done through relationships more often than spreadsheets, and the team’s role is to remove friction, support advisers and help deliver better outcomes for business owners.
“I enjoy seeing our team remove friction, support advisers and deliver better outcomes for business owners,” she says.
Begbie’s version of leadership leans on consistency rather than charisma. “I bring extensive financial services experience and a practical approach to leadership,” she says, before pointing to the harder-to-measure part of the job. “My focus is giving people clarity and building a culture based on trust, accountability and shared purpose.”
That culture is partly what drew Ryan Dennehy-Beals from a completely different industry to be a business development manager. He arrived at Prospa from software sales, having spent his career helping small and medium businesses fix their workflows rather than fund them.
“I’ve always worked in sales roles across a range of industries, most recently in SaaS, helping SMEs improve their workflows,” says Dennehy-Beals. The switch to lending, he says, came down to seeing the same problem from a different angle. Access to funding, not workflow software, was often the thing standing between a small business and its next stage of growth.
Once inside the building, the appeal held. “I love meeting different people every day,” Dennehy-Beals says. The advisers he deals with daily are the reason the model works at all.
“Our advisers are at the heart of what we do, and we wouldn’t be able to help as many customers without them,” he says.
Coming to lending from outside the industry
Coming to lending from outside the industry
Dennehy-Beals is not alone in having entered lending from somewhere else entirely. Business development manager Fletcher Thorburn spent seven years in residential property sales before making the same jump, and he credits that outsider status with sharpening rather than blunting his read on the job.
“I’ve always enjoyed being right in the middle of the process,” says Thorburn. Watching deals come together from the sidelines, he says, taught him to spot what each person in a transaction actually needs rather than what they say they need.
Thorburn frames his lack of finance-industry background as leverage rather than a gap to close. “I think coming from outside the industry has helped me look at things a bit differently,” he says.
Where a career lender might assume advisers have time to absorb every product update, Thorburn assumes the opposite. “I also understand that for many advisers, this is only a small part of what they do day to day, so I try to make things as easy and straightforward as possible.”
Dennehy-Beals describes a similar advantage from his own outsider vantage point. “Coming from outside the finance industry has been a real advantage,” he says, arguing that years spent reading business owners in unrelated sectors translates directly.
“This experience helps me build rapport quickly, understand what matters most to advisers and their clients, and ultimately help more Kiwi businesses access the funding they need,” he says.
What keeps both of them at Prospa specifically, rather than simply in lending generally, comes down to scale. “I really like that Prospa combines the startup culture and agility with the experience and capabilities of a well-established company,” Dennehy-Beals says.
Thorburn points to the people running the place rather than the balance sheet behind it.
“You can tell the founders genuinely care about what they’ve built and the people within it, and that shows in the culture,” he says. The team he has joined, he adds, carries that same energy through to day-to-day work. “Everyone has big goals and a real passion for what we’re doing, and that energy is contagious.”
Cutting through in a crowded adviser market All four are candid about where the job gets hard. Manuel, with seven years at the company behind her, points to a problem that has more to do with noise than product.
“A key challenge is cutting through and ensuring our proposition remains heard within a busy adviser network,” she says.
Awareness of Prospa NZ is not the issue; getting the message to land at the right moment is. “While awareness of our proposition is strong, the opportunity lies in how we engage and communicate so our message resonates, stays top of mind and naturally forms part of their client conversations,” she says.
Thorburn sees knowing when to step in and when to step back as key.
“In fintech, things are always changing, whether that’s products, appetite, new ideas or technology that can make life easier for advisers and their clients.” His answer is to stay close to the detail without getting in advisers’ way. “It’s about really understanding the ins and outs of what we offer, then being there to show advisers where it can fit and how it can help, without taking away from what they’re already building.”
For Dennehy-Beals, the challenge was more personal and
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