Introducing: Heather Kentsley, Investment Manager

Heather’s been a part of the Southern Cross Partners team for more than a decade and has worked across a range of roles in her time with the business. Heather started at SCP building up the investment side of the business, working to extend our investor base and explain the peer-to-peer lending process.

She’s also familiar with the lending side of the business, for a time working with financial advisers to frame up loan applications and reviewing deals to determine their suitability for both SCP and investors. Prior to SCP Heather worked alongside her husband as a mortgage broker for 10 years, so Heather’s got more than two decades of experience in the finance sector!

Helping people is what she enjoys most about SCP – she loves showing people how the lending system works and finds it rewarding to play a role in helping people understand peer to peer investing. It’s also great to work for a company that sticks to its knitting. We’re specialists in what we know at Southern Cross Partners and it’s great to bring that specialist knowledge to investors every day.

We asked Heather for her top points on what she’s learned over her time at SCP:

• The buck stops with you. It’s your money, and ultimately you need to decide what you do with it. You work hard to make your money, so it only makes sense that finding the best place for your money takes some work too. That includes doing your own due diligence with where your money’s going and what happens with that money when you give it to someone. Engaging with a financial adviser could be key part of this.
• Eggs don’t belong in one basket. People are familiar with giving their money to an investment broker and having money placed into a handful of similar companies on their behalf, but that may not be true asset diversification. SCP is different in that even though all of our loans are mortgages, you have control over which mortgages you want to invest money in based on your personal risk level, loan term, and other requirements.
• Everything is cyclical. Property and financial markets are cyclical, not linear. If interest rates are low at the moment, we have to remember that they will increase at some point – it’s all part of the cycle. The key is to hold investments over the long term and not make any knee-jerk decisions.

Southern Cross Partners provides long-term investment options using short-term products, with the intention to put money in and let it roll onto other mortgages. To discuss your investment opportunities with SCP, call 0800 58 00 43 or email investments@scpartners.co.nz.