Hobson Wealth unlocks liquidity for employees - and removes a growing admin burden

Hobson Wealth is a leading specialist private wealth advisory group, with teams of private wealth advisers in Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch. The key people in the business own the business and are proudly Kiwi-owned and operated.

Hobson Wealth started an employee share scheme in 2016, following the purchase of Macquarie Private Wealth. Its leadership wanted to offer the scheme to employees to increase engagement, as well as to attract and retain talent.

*‍ Hobson Wealth was later acquired by Forsyth Barr (Dec 2024). 

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The challenge: growing complexity and limited liquidity

While the share scheme was successful in building alignment, it lacked one critical feature: liquidity.

When employees wanted, or were required, to sell shares, the process was manual. The CFO would email staff to find a buyer, creating a “first come, first served” dynamic with limited transparency around pricing.

“We didn’t have an open market of buyers as such, I had to actively participate to find interested parties. It was ad hoc, and although it never did, there was potential for friction should anyone feel the system was unfair.” - Mike Ellis, CFO, Hobson Wealth.

Additionally, the share scheme had grown in size and complexity since its inception making it an unsustainable operating model.

“In 5 years the share scheme has become a bigger task; we have more employees with shares and we operate a shareholder loan scheme.” - Ellis.

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The solution: a structured, transparent internal market

Hobson Wealth implemented Syndex’s periodic market - a closed, company-run trading event that enables shareholders to buy and sell shares in a controlled, transparent environment. Price discovery is achieved through the carefully-tuned algorithm that takes all bids and offers and declares the optimum selling price.

“The Syndex product has taken out the grey area - who is buying or selling and at what price.” - Ellis.

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Beyond liquidity: operational efficiency at scale

While the initial goal was to enable trading, the broader operational benefits quickly became clear. The platform’s integrated registry replaced manual processes and fragmented data management, significantly reducing administrative workload.

“The trading platform offers the transparency and structure that we were lacking, but equally significant to us as the scheme managers is the employee registry.” - Ellis.

For Hobson Wealth’s finance team, this has translated into tangible time savings - estimated at up to two weeks per year - alongside reduced complexity and risk.

“This was the biggest surprise to us. We were looking for a tech update for the trading of shares and got so much more.” - Ellis.

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Removing friction from dividends and communications

One of the most time-intensive processes - dividend administration, has been fully automated.

Previously, this required spreadsheets, manual calculations, IRD uploads and individually prepared communications. Now, the platform manages:

• Dividend calculations and distributions
• IRD reporting and uploads
• Secure document storage
• Automated employee notifications

Employees also benefit from a dedicated portal, providing real-time access to their holdings, documents and trading events - removing the need for ad hoc information requests and further reducing administrative load.

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Reducing key-person risk and future-proofing the scheme

By centralising data and systemising processes, Hobson Wealth has also mitigated key-person risk - a common issue in manually run schemes.

Knowledge is no longer concentrated with a single individual, and co-managers can confidently step into scheme administration when needed.

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Scalable value for growing schemes

With around 50 employees currently participating, Hobson Wealth sees the platform as both practical today and scalable for the future.

“The pricing is good - it’s strong value. It gets the hard work done, and as the scheme grows, the admin won’t.” -  Ellis.

Key outcomes

• Liquidity unlocked: Structured, fair internal market for employee shareholders
• Transparency improved: Clear price discovery and equal access for participants
• Admin reduced: ~2 weeks of annual time savings for the finance team
• Processes automated: Dividends, reporting and communications streamlined
• Risk mitigated: Reduced reliance on key individuals

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