Howie Timms: Chairman of Our Town and dedicated mututal funds manager

May 9th, 2012
By David Armstrong

As one of the tallest people working in our CBD, the leader of the business organisation Our Town Motueka stands out literally and figuratively from the crowd.

It is not surprising to learn that Howie Timms, branch manager of the Nelson Building Society, was once part of a champion Canterbury basketball team. He can be easily spotted walking - usually on a mission - down High Street, head and shoulders above the average pedestrian traffic.

An affable but straight-talking, motivated man, Howie is one of Motueka's strongest advocates for the fostering of community spirit through not only business but also community participation. Although he lives in Mapua, he spends much of his energy on his Motueka work base, encouraging residents to support local business.

He was born in Ashburton in 1968, where he lived until he was 19. He attended Ashburton High School but after sixth form he was keen to get out and explore job opportunities. And his first promising opportunity - at the Ashburton branch of the National Bank - provided the foundation for his on-going career in banking and finance.

At the time his main love was sports and especially basketball, and that triggered a work transfer to the Christchurch Hereford Street branch. "It was more about basketball than a career," he laughs.

He played one year of National league for the Canterbury Rams, the year they won the league. His brother Graham was a member of the Rams and the New Zealand team for several years. The Rams were well known then for their billboard players such as Dutchie Rademakers, Clyde Huntley, John Hill and Kenny Perkins. "I was lucky enough to play that one year," he says. "I was on the bench a lot, but we won the championship. That was a lot of fun."

He'd been working and playing in Christchurch for five years when he met a Canadian hitchhiker named Anna. "Things went pretty well there," he smiles, "and she dragged me off overseas travelling various places. She's now my wife."

First up it was back to her home city of Montreal for 12 months, then on to other countries including South America, Europe and Sweden in particular for over a year. To live, Howie did all the usual working holiday jobs in hospitality and manual labouring.

Shopping locally

"We're not a big town, and we need to sustain the services that are in town.

"Okay, you may pay a little bit more, but if you don't use them, they won't survive. Then when you really want them one day they won't be here.

"That's it in a nutshell. In a small town, you have to support each other."

Eventually looking to settle, Howie and Anna decided in 1994 to live in Melbourne. Howie soon got what turned out to be a life-changing position at a small organisation called National Mutual Property Services, a part of National Mutual which handled discounted staff mortgages.

He stayed with them throughout his 12 years in Melbourne, and was a key part of the development of a business which grew from employing 20 to a staff count of nearly 1000. The development included a big joint venture with some very large mutually owned pension funds to provide cheap home loans to their 4 million members. In time, the business also gained a banking licence and was named Members Equity Bank.

Howie became the National Business Development Manager for the bank. "It was a great career for me to grow with the growth of that company," he says. "And it had pretty much the same ownership structure as who I work for now. It's not listed [on the stock exchange] and has no external shareholders."

Late in 2004 Howie and Anna were having dinner with Kiwi friends who were planning to move back to New Zealand. Why? They had three young boys (by this stage Howie and Anna had two small children aged 1 and 3) and found they were spending a lot of time commuting, and they had no extended family around them, so they wanted to go back to Ashburton where their parents were and give their children a Kiwi upbringing with space and freedom, a better way of life despite earning less money.

"Initially we thought this wasn't the right way to do it," he says, "but over the following few weeks my wife started to get us thinking about things in life apart from money and career, which were the only two reasons for us to stay in Australia. She eventually wore me down.

"Because of my job and the network I had, that was the hardest thing for me to leave. But the decision weas made. Next was where we were going to live." Queenstown/Wanaka and Nelson were the options, and a holiday in Nelson and the discovery of a property in Mapua sealed the deal.

"I told my wife I wanted two more years in Australia unless she could find me a job with a mutually owned financial institution. I didn't want to work for a big Aussie bank, so the choices were Nelson-based building socities NBS or SBS. But I thought there'd be no jobs there for years.

"Of course, in a couple of months Anna emailed to me a vacancy for the branch manager at NBS Motueka. So in October 2005 I started here."

Howie is a strong advocate for mutual funds - entities which are owned by the members with all profits going to members' superannuation funds - and this has, of course, carried through to his current work. "I have a passion for working for a mutual, where the culture is about your customers, because they're members; you don't have to worry about delivering a return to external shareholders.

"NBS profits go back into our business reserves, apart from the portion we push out into the community in the form of sponsorship and grants. Last year that was about $250,000 and this year it'll be about $300k. I like to call that our dividend to the community." (At this point we need to note that NBS is a sponsor of Motueka Online.)

Howie still enjoys sports. He plays some golf but his main love is mountain biking. "With Nelson, this region has some of the best mountain bike trails in the world. When I'm not working or with my family, that's what I want to be doing." He is a part of a group of 10 to 15 people who go out every Thursday, rain or shine, using the tracks.

He coaches and helps out with the various sports teams that his boys are involved in.

Howie quickly took on a leading community role when he decided to join the Our Town Motueka committee. "I saw it as a way to meet people in town. While in Melbourne I'd got a Bachelor of Business degree and so I had something to contribute." After two years he was persuaded to be chairman for a while, "but it's turned out to be a little longer".

I've really enjoyed it, but work has got a lot busier since I started here, with growth in this branch being the strongest of all branches in the NBS network, so balancing what I'm paid for with the time put into Our Town has been a little challenging in the past year or so."

He thinks his biggest achievement while at the helm of OTM has been the completion of the stalled project to get the town entrance sign installed. The funds for the sign had been sitting for around 15 years but for various reasons - chiefly the disagreements among people of the community during consultations - the project had never advanced.

"I suppose I'm proud that I was able to take control of that project and eventually had erected a pretty special sign. It was hard working with LTNZ and the council through consent processes and it needed someone to drive it through."

The other big Our Town project he and Anita Newport fostered was the installation of hanging baskets outside High Street shops this past summer. Currently they are working to have them in place all the year round and being fed through an irrigation system.

The appointment of a new paid business coordinator for Our Town Motueka will help realise one of his main long-term goals - to deliver tangible benefits to businesses, promoting and marketing local goods and services so that residents and visitors will spend their money in Motueka, not in Nelson or Richmond.

"The other things we do - the events we run and being a conduit between council and business owners - are fine, but our core job is business promotion for our members so they get a return on the rating they're charged for us {Our Town Motueka] to exist."

Shopping locally is vital for our future. "We're not a big town, and we need to sustain the services that are in town - not just High Street retailers, but also the mechanics and panel beaters and so on.

"Okay, you may pay a little bit more, but if you don't use them, they won't survive. Then when you really want them one day they won't be here. That's it in a nutshell. In a small town, you have to support each other."

This view is backed up by Howie's view that one of the best things about Motueka - along with its diversity of people, its climate and natural outdoor setting - is that it has so many owner-operated shops. "I'd hate the town to turn into some big-box High Street USA type of place."

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