About Whakaaro
We help businesses make sense of banking.
Who We Are
We help New Zealand businesses get more value from their banking. Payments, cash management, liquidity, trade, and receivables finance should help businesses operate more efficiently, free up time, unlock capital, and support growth. But too often, the value is hard to see, hard to implement, or hard to measure.
We make that value clear. We advise, implement, and measure success so businesses can make better banking decisions without having to work it all out alone with the bank.
Our Experience
Across our founding team, we bring more than 85 years of senior banking experience across New Zealand and international banking environments. We have led teams, worked directly with business customers, shaped transaction banking solutions, and helped organisations improve the way they manage payments, cash, liquidity, trade, receivables, merchant services, and operational banking.
Our experience has been earned inside banks and alongside customers. It is practical, lived experience — built from solving real problems, helping customers make decisions, and turning banking products into outcomes businesses can see and measure.
What Makes Us Different
We are not a firm that thinks it understands banking from the outside. We have worked in the parts of banking that businesses rely on every day: payments, cash management, liquidity management, trade, and receivables finance. Our role is to translate that experience into practical advice customers can understand and use.
Our strength is breadth. We have worked across many different types of New Zealand businesses — from large organisations with complex local and international banking needs to businesses looking for better ways to manage payments, cash, liquidity, trade, and receivables. That breadth gives us a practical view of what works across different industries, operating models, and stages of growth.
We have helped some of New Zealand’s largest companies establish overseas banking relationships and make important decisions about banking partners. We can run a banking selection process, manage an RFP, assess options, negotiate with providers, and advise on the solution that best fits the business.
Our role can be as hands-on as needed. We can document the implementation, support internal teams, or work directly through the detail with the customer. We understand both sides of the table: how banks work, and what businesses need to get change delivered.
Our Connection to Aotearoa New Zealand
We are local to Aotearoa New Zealand, with global banking experience. We are not a global firm looking in from the outside. We are a New Zealand-based team that has worked inside global banks, helped Kiwi businesses establish overseas banking relationships, and seen what it takes for local organisations to operate confidently at home and offshore.
We now bring that experience back to businesses here — combining knowledge of international banking, cross-border relationships, payments, cash, liquidity, trade, and implementation with a practical understanding of the New Zealand market.
The Māori heritage of some of our founders strengthens our connection to Aotearoa and the responsibility we feel in the way we work. For us, that connection shows up in relationships, trust, care, and a long-term view of the outcomes we help create for customers.
How We Work
We keep things simple, practical, and focused on the customer. We listen first, explain clearly, and help businesses understand their options before they make important banking decisions.
We are not a firm that studies banking from textbooks. We have lived it. Our role is to translate decades of real experience into practical advice that customers can understand and act on — with confidence.
Meet Our Founders
Direct access to experienced banking executives — not junior consultants.
Cody Martin
20 years · Payments & Banking Infrastructure
Cody helps businesses improve the way payments and operational banking work in practice. He brings experience across payments, banking infrastructure, relationship management, and client-side optimisation. He identifies where time, money, or visibility may be lost, then helps implement practical improvements that create better control and cost outcomes.
Elaine Matthews
35 years · Transaction Banking & Change
Elaine helps organisations turn banking change into practical, adopted ways of working. She brings experience across transactional banking, merchant solutions, change, leadership, and business performance. Her strength is connecting strategy with delivery so new solutions are understood, embedded, and measured in a way that supports commercial outcomes and the people who use them.
Jarron Boulter
30 years · Corporate, Institutional & Liquidity
Jarron helps businesses approach banking decisions and negotiations with greater confidence. He brings senior banking leadership experience across wholesale, corporate, institutional, liquidity, cash management, and transaction banking. He understands how banks think and helps customers shape solutions that are commercially sound, practical, and aligned to their wider business goals.