CEO Q&A: CBL Corporation managing director Peter Harris

Peter Harris says long-term investors can see right through the current volatility. Photo / Dean Purcell

Financial risk insurer CBL Corporation will list on the sharemarket on Tuesday in an offer that will raise $125 million, $90 million of which will be new capital earmarked for growing the Auckland-based business.

Carter Holt Harvey shelved its IPO plans for Carters building supplies last week. What makes you so sure that it's a good time for CBL to list?

I am not sure that there is any perfect time to list. Listing is a process and comes at the end of six to nine months of solid preparatory work, and no one has a crystal ball as to where the stock market would be when the listing date finally came around. The important thing to do if you want to list is to get on and do it, and once listed, the market will decide how they deal with your shares.

Also, it is not as if current CBL shareholders were exiting and wanted top price for their shares - we are staying on for the long term and so we all intend to grow the stock for everyone's benefit, including existing shareholders. Long-term investors can see right through the current volatility, and none of the present factors driving the current volatility in the market affect CBL's underlying business in the slightest.

How much of an adjustment will it be for you to run a publicly listed company?

I don't see any significant adjustment being required. As a typically Kiwi company, for the past 20 years or so we have just got on and done it. We have never sought publicity, and we don't advertise. All of our business is done by referral and building relationships. So I think the biggest change in being a public company will be seeing our name in the media more frequently, and many things that we do will become public information. We have been under a continuous disclosure regime in Australia for 18 months, so we have some experience with this, but there will be even more as a public company.

One change will be in communicating more and developing new relationships with our shareholders. We look forward to that, because we think we have a good story, and we are happy to share it.

We have an exceptional board of directors with a lot of international insurance and financial services experience. That has set us up well for public corporate life.

Some people in the market have said Kiwi investors might find CBL difficult to understand as it operates in a niche area of insurance. Do you think that's a fair comment?

I think that is a fair comment, for New Zealand investors anyway. People don't understand what they don't know about. CBL is the first insurance company in New Zealand to go public in 16 years (after Tower Insurance in 1999). These will be the only two listed New Zealand-based insurance companies in New Zealand, so there is not a lot of investor knowledge in the sector. In Australia there is a much better understanding of insurance with several listed insurance companies on the ASX.

But I like to think that our new shareholders have invested because of the track record of profitable growth, and in the management team who have created it. All of those people remain in place to continue that track record. Over time, our NZ investors will understand our business better. It is not complicated.

Where would you like to see CBL in 10 years' time?

We will be writing business in more countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, India and possibly China.

We will have grown our footprint in Australia and Mexico. We will continue to work hard on retaining our culture and values - an important part of our success. We will be bigger but I hope that the little things will remain important, because we should all remember what it was like to be small. CBL will remain focused on our profitability rather than top line revenue, and will be an even bigger NZ exporter of financial services.

What's the greatest piece of financial advice you've ever received?

Save 10 per cent of what you earn. I haven't always stuck with that personally, but I have never forgotten it. Saving up for things (or in corporate-speak: build your reserves up), and doing things as you can afford them is an old-fashioned virtue but is still a good one. Not too many people go broke by having too much saved up for contingencies.

What drives you to keep going into the office every day?

Actually, since over 95 per cent of our business is derived from our offshore markets, I spend a lot of time in aircraft, rather than driving to the office. But what motivates me is there is always something new or different happening, new opportunities, new challenges, mistakes to be made and learned from, new ideas, increasing business. I firmly believe that nothing is impossible.

What sort of growth have you seen in your time with CBL?

CBL is 42 years old, and I have been with the company for 19 years. In 2000, the year we decided to grow our market internationally, we were earning $2 million in annual revenue, with one office in Auckland and one paid employee. This year we expect to earn over $300 million in annual revenue, with eight offices around the world and 100 employees.