Updated — A global financing firm operating at higher altitudes in Canada’s food and agrifood sector now plans to expand its business down to the farm and ranch level.
The Canadian arm of Rabobank — an Amsterdam-based farmer co-operative lender, providing banking, leasing and real estate services in more than 38 countries — announced Tuesday it’s getting set to offer “financing, risk management and partnership solutions” to primary producers in this country.
For now, the company said, it plans to focus on a “core market” of the three Prairie provinces, served by a remote workforce rather than physical branch offices.
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Rabobank’s Canadian arm has operated out of Toronto since 1997 and today has a staff of about 20 providing loans, asset-based financing, private placements, merger-and-acquisition services and risk management products among others.
It describes its Canadian business so far as “food and agribusiness industry-specific,” for wholesale clients across much of the value chain.
At the farm level, though, the Canadian arm’s work has until now been only indirectly, through “third-party vendor finance partnerships.” For example, Rabobank has provided financing on crop inputs to an estimated 12,000 farmers via Richardson Pioneer’s ag business centres on the Prairies.
The company said this week via email its decision to enter the farm lending business will have no impact on its offerings through third-party vendors such as Richardson at this time.
In a joint venture with Calgary-based Telus Agriculture, Rabobank in 2021 also took ownership of Minneapolis tech firm Conservis, whose software products gather and integrate farm-level data from platforms such as Climate FieldView, the John Deere Operations Center, Crop Data Management Systems and Rabo AgriFinance.
Since Rabobank’s arrival in Canada, “we’ve gained a deep understanding of the marketplace and how Rabobank can best serve Canada’s leading growers,” Paul Beiboer, Rabobank North America’s CEO, said in a release Tuesday.
Expanding its Canadian portfolio to include direct farm-level lending has already been an ongoing project for nearly three years, the company said Tuesday, noting it’s already met all national and provincial regulatory and licensing requirements.
Rabobank said it plans to offer “short- and long-term debt options” at the farm and ranch level. “We will be a one-stop shop for Canada’s agricultural term and operational lending needs, as well as other financial services and risk management products,” Marc Drouin, Rabobank Canada’s general manager, said in Tuesday’s release.
Rabobank has also already named Roxane Lieverse as its new head of Canada agricultural banking, to be based in Calgary. Lieverse, up until October, was director of Alberta agricultural banking with Scotiabank, and previously was a regional manager for National Bank of Canada.
Lieverse is also now building a “dedicated team of relationship managers” for the ag lending business, Rabobank said.
The company is now “onboarding several experienced and talented relationship managers,” she said via email, adding that it’s entering the market “with skilled bankers who truly understand agriculture and want to support industry growth.” Meanwhile, she said, farmers will be able to contact the company via its general email.
In Rabobank’s release, Lieverse said the company plans to “do business with our customers at their kitchen table (and) meet face-to-face with clients to listen to their needs and understand their operations.”
Rabobank’s approach, she said via email, will focus on a “partnership model” with a producer. Such producers, she said, “tend to take a longer-term, growth-based view of their operation and understand that they need a financing partner through the industry cycles.”
Setting Rabobank apart from other lenders in the same market, she said, is the bank’s “deep global research… which prospective customers will benefit from, as they navigate the global impact on their operation.”
In a separate interview this week with Rod Nickel of the Reuters news service, company officials said that out of the total Canadian farm lending market, currently dominated by Farm Credit Canada and the big six domestic banks, Rabobank aims to command a 10-15 per cent share within 15 years.
“The number of young farmers is actually growing and the country is on track to become the world’s second-largest food and agricultural products exporter,” Beiboer said in Tuesday’s release, describing Canada as “an attractive and logical market” for Rabobank to work with farmers and ranchers as well as its current corporate clients.
— Article updated Jan. 14, 2023 to include additional information from Roxane Lieverse of Rabobank.
