Challenger still committed to NZ market

At the end of last year the group laid off two of its business development team, Ken O'Rourke and Andrew Sparrow, and its marketing manager Anna Minchev.

"We are still committed here," Rowley says. "We have spent too much not to be committed."

Challenger is a niche fund manager offering a number of products including Endowment Warrants, the recently released Bank Endowment Warrants, an ethical fund, the Target One Million savings scheme, and a GAM managed OEIC which invests in Australasian shares. It also owns former niche fund manager Coronet.

The company has aggressively been trying to build its presence in the New Zealand market over the past 18 months, and has spent a considerable sum on this marketing exercise.

Rowley says part of the aim of this exercise was to get the Challenger name known in the market place. He says that for its size the firm put a lot of money and resources into marketing.

The decision to lay off three people was a "reality check", he says.

It is also an effort to match costs with revenue.

Rowley says the group's product are now well-known in the market place and it doesn't need such a big sales team.

"The product is pretty well set and doesn't need a lot of selling," he says. "We want more product service rather than sales service now."

Despite making slow progress Rowley says that "the business is starting to work".

He is still keen to leverage off Challenger's Australian parent company's product strengths and put a "bigger" product into the New Zealand market.

Challenger is one of the biggest providers of annuities in Australia, and Rowley would like to launch an annuities product in New Zealand.

Rowley, while having talked about this idea before, would like to be in a position to decide whether this idea was a goer by March.

Following the departure of O'Rourke and Sparrow Roweley says he will be spending "more time in the field."

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