As he pointed out the wool carpet laid on the floor of the Moray Pl premises, Rabobank New Zealand chief executive Todd Charteris said it was a functional and practical space for use by staff, clients and rural professionals the bank worked with.
Mr Charteris, who was in the city for the opening of the refurbished office, had spent much of the week talking to clients.
The tide was definitely turning in terms of farmer confidence, driven by increasing commodity prices and interest rates coming down, he said.
While the rural sector was still dealing with the remnants of on-farm inflation, along with global uncertainty and geopolitical risk, on balance, confidence was improving.
The sector had been through an "incredibly tough" couple of years, which should not be underestimated, but farming businesses had shown resilience.
Notwithstanding the "waves on the ocean", Mr Charteris believed the outlook for the rest of the year was very positive. Red meat commodity prices were very high for this time of year and, while some areas were getting dry, most of those had large banks of feed going into the dry spell.
Regulations and uncertainty around that in the past had caused concern, but he believed the government was "doing a pretty good job of restoring some confidence in the sector".
The challenge was to get that balance right between what was being done on-farm and how that translated to markets that product was being sent to, but he saw that as more of an opportunity than a risk.
Mr Charteris has been in the role for seven years and staff numbers in that time had grown from about 350 to 540, while market share had gone from about 16% to 22%. Rabobank was the second-largest lender to the agri-sector in New Zealand.
The banking industry was competitive, which he welcomed, and there were always things to work on, he said.
His focus was on allowing staff "to do what they need to do and take that noise away and keep us on track". It was also about engaging with stakeholders and clients and Rabobank’s client councils played an important role in outlining the key issues being faced in rural communities.
Rabobank this week announced an initiative, the Rabo Community Hub Competition, which provided entrants with a chance to win $5000 to go towards the improvement of their rural community hall, clubrooms or marae.
Twenty winners would be selected throughout the country and the winners would be announced in early April.
