Aurora shines in Deloitte Fast 50

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Aurora Financial has been ranked near the top of the Deloitte Fast 50 for 2021 with a 461% growth in revenue over the past three years.

Monday, November 1st 2021, 4:41PM 2 Comments

by Matthew Martin

Simon Rolland.

The annual Deloitte Fast 50 index ranks New Zealand’s fastest-growing businesses that have shown significant growth over a three year period and are determined by revenue growth percentage.

At the top of this year's list was Auckland-based digital classroom platform Kami with revenue growth of 1177%.

Aurora also took out the Christchurch and upper South Island regional award for the fastest growing services business.

The Fast 50 was announced by Deloitte New Zealand at a virtual awards ceremony late last week.

"With absolutely outstanding growth, built on excellence, innovation, commitment, courage, teamwork, drive and an unwavering belief in what they do, taking out 5th place with 461% growth a financial advice firm that tailors its advice to reflect their client circumstances and financial goals, this company certainly has the key to success," Deloitte said.

Aurora Financial chief executive Simon Rolland says he's excited to make the top five, but it's not the first time Rolland has seen success on the Fast 50 index with Aurora Insurance reaching 41st with 195% revenue growth in 2018.

He says Aurora's success is driven by a strong vision backed up by a series of in-house initiatives that helps the company stand out from the rest.

Aurora does its own digital marketing, compliance training and development, has created its own software, and apart from outsourcing "the odd legal thing", relies on its youthful staff so the company retains control of its processes from start to finish.

"It's a lot of little things...we just do them better - our systems are better, our people are better, our processes are better, we are not old, stale and boring."

Rolland says Aurora has, on average, the youngest client base in New Zealand and has probably the youngest adviser team with an average adviser age of between 27 and 28 years of age.

"We also run one of the leanest adviser to admin staff ratios of 70 advisers to two admin staff...we also do great marketing and we know a lot of the others don't do this well at all.

"We like to do things our way, we have zero churn, we have never bought a book, and while the FMA may not like commissions we think it's the crappy business models that are the ones that cause churn."

While Rolland says the company is now looking at a corporatisation and consolidation phase, Aurora has had its two biggest quarters since the Fast 50 cut off date of March 31.

"We are still growing and learning and know there's still a long way to go...it's more about setting the business on track for the next 10 years."

He says the next goal is to hit the 100 adviser mark (they currently have 70 advisers) and are recruiting in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and are keen to find keen new graduates to fill their ranks.

Also making the Fast 50 index were onilne stock trading company Tiger Brokers with 211% revenue growth and BlackBull Markets, an Electronic Communication Network (ECN) liquidity brokerage based in Auckland, with 181% revenue growth.

Fast 50 winners must be a New Zealand registered business trading for a minimum of three years, have revenue of over $1 million in the 2019 financial year, submit independently prepared financial statements for 2019 and 2021 and supply export revenue if applicable.

Tags: Aurora Financial awards Deloitte Financial advice

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