National insurance broking firms Rothbury and Commercial & General merged on 1 April 2005 to form C & G Rothbury Insurance Group, making the combined company one of New Zealand’s largest insurance broking operations.

Back in 1950, when Rothbury was established with a single office in Auckland, the idea of a national operation with 14 offices employing over 100 people and handling annual insurance revenue of $40 million would have been only a dream. The same would have been true at Commercial & General (C & G), which started in Invercargill in 1990 after two local businesses agreed to merge.

The company now enjoys greater economies of scale, is more capable of servicing national accounts, and can secure better deals for clients through the greater buying power of the group.

Stronger platform
When the merger was pending, the chief financial officer for the group, Bruce Edmonds, took the opportunity to review the company’s financial platforms. “To maximise the value of the merger, we needed a strong logistical platform to bring together our people, databases, branding and financials from the two former businesses,” he says.

Edmonds says an upgrade of C & G Rothbury’s incumbent system was considered, but that didn’t work for the company due to its complicated branch structure.

C & G Rothbury has an owner-operator model, which means that each branch has local ownership and is a separate legal entity. Therefore,being able to produce financial reports at both branch and consolidated level was an important criterion in the decision.

One software option that caught Edmonds’ eye was Greentree. “It was very flexible, especially in regard to its integration with Excel. Processing and reporting are also very easy,” he says. Edmonds was also pleased with the level of support offered locally by his Greentree consultant.

But the deciding element that made C & G Rothbury become a Greentree customer was Greentree’s inter-company function. Greentree was capable of handling and producing financial information for both branch and consolidated reporting - at a cost well below the other main contender.

Time saving
Melanie Montgomery, group accountant at C & G Rothbury explains, “Because we have a number of branches we need to balance inter company accounts and complete comparison reports each month, as well as normal accounting process.”

Greentree allows up to 99 companies to be automatically linked, cutting out reconciliation processes. Edmonds says it has saved his company a huge amount of time. It also means that an entry made today will show instantly in financial reports like Profit & Loss. “It’s great because transactions have an immediate impact,”he says.

Previously, the software used by C & G Rothbury was limited in some of these areas, meaning that many journal entries and a lot of re-work was required to get the same outcome. Greentree has proven to be both effective and functional for the accounting staff at New Zealand’s fastest growing insurance broking group. Since, its introduction in May the company’s accounting team has been impressed by the number of tasks that Greentree tackles with ease.

The multi-user functionality of the package has proved to be especially beneficial, Montgomery says. This allows a number of people to use the system and up-date a different part of the same record at the same time without trip-up ’s or block-outs. Essential for an operation which has accounting staff based in a number of locations.

Another innovation which Greentree offers is the ability to lock down accounting periods so that late changes cannot be made.

“If an invoice arrives after our cut-off we don’t want that included into the month that has gone, doing so requires too much modification of completed records,” says Montgomery. “With Greentree we lock down the period and that’s that, making it all tidy and correct.”

But the feature that Montgomery and her team like the most is the live link to Excel which ensures that the financial spreadsheets that they complete each month for branch performance analysis, can be instantly updated at any time.

A good balance
Edmonds says Greentree provides a good balance between ease of use and appropriate controls. “It has a good audit trail, but also allows manipulation of reports using Excel.” The company also uses Greentree to import bank transactions for easier account reconciliation.

Implementation of Greentree has been smooth for the insurance broker. “Our consultant understood our business and offered the right solution right away, ”Edmonds says. “He didn’t offer something that he knew we would only knock back. He has given us excellent support.”

The company recently changed servers on a weekend, but Edmonds says the Greentree consultant was there on the Saturday morning to help, making the changeover painless.

C & G Rothbury hasn’t finished its expansion yet: it has plans to more than double in size over the next few years; expand internationally; and continue to serve its New Zealand clients as it has done for over 50 years. And Edmonds is positive about the future software-wise. “We believe Greentree will grow with us,” he says.

For more information

www.greentree.com/customers/profiles/rothbury.cfm

Greentree International
Graham Hill
Ph: 0800 313 313
Fax: 09 366 3889
graham.hill@greentree.com
www.greentree.com

September 2005

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