Bridge gap to development for a change

A DIRECTOR appointed to the board of insurer Suncorp believes that businesspeople can work with aid groups to help build a better world.

It takes only a glance at the countries listed at the bottom of Isis Group’s business cards to see it is an unusual multinational.

What can a company be doing in Australia, Britain, the United States, Bermuda, Uganda and Nepal? The answer lies in the life story and vision of joint founder and former New Zealand student radical Audette Exel, who set out to change the world and is making a pretty good fist of it.

Exel joined general insurance giant Suncorp last year as a nonexecutive director. To the role she brings knowledge of the reinsurance market: Isis Group advises banks, reinsurers, private equity firms and hedge funds on large transactions such as capital raisings and mergers and acquisitions.

It is niche, technical work built on Exel’s experience as a lawyer and then a banker in Bermuda, the world’s biggest reinsurance market – hence the reference to Bermuda in the list of places where Isis operates.

It’s what happens to the fees earned from this work that brings the company to Uganda and Nepal. All the profits are sunk into development projects operated by Isis Group’s charity arm. Stitch together a boutique investment bank with a World Vision-style approach and you’ll get the picture.

‘‘I come from a background in social justice and then had a career through the halls of power as a banker and lawyer,’’ Exel told the The Australian Financial Review at a social enterprise conference at RMIT University in Melbourne.

‘‘Through that process, I began to look at the development sector and to realise how incredibly driven it is by donor needs’’, she said.

‘‘So the idea was to see if you could use business skills to create a different funding model to allow a development organisation to focus on evidence-based service delivery, and not spend their lives worrying about what their donors needed or wanted. You can run a great business and effect social change, that’s what we’ve wanted to prove.’’

Aid projects suffer from a ‘‘liability mismatch’’ said Exel, borrowing a term from finance. The problem is that money for many aid organisations comes in the door in dribs and drabs, but the most needed projects are long-term ones.

Among the Isis aid programmes are a maternity ward and intensive care unit for premature babies in Uganda and providing pit latrines and access to clean drinking water to remote communities in Nepal.

The corporate advisory business delivers a constant stream of funds, guaranteeing the charity has what it needs to keep running its projects.

In 15 years, Exel says Isis has saved about 100,000 lives, from pregnant woman in Uganda to trafficked children in Nepal. About A$4 million improves the lives of about 20,000 people each year and it is all funded from fees gathered from a world that could not be more different from development.

Among Exel’s recent clients was a German bank seeking advice on reinsurance entities used for creating an investment product known as principal return wraps.

Suncorp chairman Ziggy Switkowski calls her work inspiring. ‘‘She has extensive finance and investment experience coupled with a wonderful track record for getting involved in community activity and causes which make a difference, and that’s something that’s also part of the fabric of Suncorp,’’ he said.

Exel’s quest to bridge the gap