Kirk Cheesman is the Group Managing Director of NCI and started in 1990 as an Office Trainee. Throughout Kirk’s time at NCI the company has grown to over 180 employees and 4,000 clients throughout Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia.

Kirk shows strength in identifying and finding appropriate solutions to mitigate trade credit risks. This has been applied to SME’s as well as large multi-national domestic and international companies. He is a cornerstone of NCI’s success, with his enthusiasm to develop new ideas to protect our clients from trade credit risks.

He believes in building a strong culture within NCI, which leads to making close business friendships with clients and partners.

James Thornberry was appointed Managing Director of NCI in Australia following a 25 year career in banking, where he held senior positions at CBA, Deutsche Bank and Nab. Prior to joining NCI he was an Executive Director at CBA where he led a national team providing Trade & Working Capital solutions across a diversified customer base.

Throughout his career James has worked closely with businesses of all types and sizes, both domestically and internationally, from SME to large corporates and multinationals. He is passionate about enabling trade and mitigating risk and sees NCI playing an important role in helping more businesses protect their profits, enhance their liquidity, grow their sales, and navigate into new markets.

Outside of work James enjoys spending time with his wife and two teenage kids, and is a lover of sports and the great outdoors.

Craig Rowe, as the Executive Manager – Finance, heads up NCI’s Finance Team. With nearly 3 decades in finance and accounting, he has a wealth of experience in both public practice and commerce including international and Big 4 roles.

In addition to his responsibility for NCI’s compliance and reporting requirements, he and his team play an instrumental role in providing value-added support to management and other stakeholders within the group.

Craig enjoys the challenges of working for an innovative, market-leading business that is continually striving to stay ahead of the curve.  Above all else, he enjoys being part of a team and working towards collective goals.

Prudence Chang has been at NCI since 2006. Starting off as a Sales Executive, moving to Senior Sales Executive, then Sales Manager and now Executive Manager – Business Development and Partners. She not only oversees the strategic planning and National Partnerships for the sales teams but also negotiates policies.

She has won numerous awards including 12 NCI achievement awards, Insurance Business Magazine Elite Broker award 7 times and most recently was awarded a top position in Elite Woman in Insurance Broker 2021.

Prudence has the experience to negotiate the most competitive policy, no matter if it is for an SME or a large muti national.

She is energetic and passionate in all walks of her professional life.

Jeff George commenced with NCI in 1991 and is Head of Risk and Group Services. This includes overseeing The Hub service divisions – Claims, Limits, Credit Services and Collections – and Risk and Compliance throughout NCI.

With such knowledge and experience, Jeff is very much the “go-to” person for clients and throughout NCI for technical matters. His strong knowledge of insurer policy wordings and of NCI’s product offerings is invaluable in tailoring solutions to not only protect clients, but to enable them to grow.

His motto is for clients to “survive and thrive” – now and into the future.

Lisa is the General Manager of Operations at NCI, starting her career in 2003. Throughout this time, she has held a variety of different roles, giving her a broad understanding of NCI’s business.

Lisa specialises in the management of large projects, data and process analysis and creating efficiencies across all of NCI’s operational aspects.

Her passion for creating opportunities for others to achieve their professional goals and the development of new products and services is paramount in her role.

Most recently, Lisa was responsible for the successful role out of NCI’s NextGen project which included recreating our client platform, NCILink.

Darren Maxfield is an Account Director who has worked in client-service at NCI for over 20 years. He has managed clients ranging from regional SMEs to global enterprises and his responsibilities now include management of NCI’s key accounts, as well as general service standards and model.

Darren has developed great experience and skill working in local and overseas markets, and trusted relationships with insurers and other service providers. He focuses on understanding and communicating client needs to ensure the best solutions and outcomes.

Darren appreciates the urgency and critical nature of issues and strives to exceed expectations in resolving them.

Sam Turtle is the General Manager – NSW/ACT for NCI. Starting with NCI in 2011, he progressed through multiple departments in South Australia before moving to Sydney in 2014. This variety of roles has given Sam a great understanding of the industry, allowing him to consistently deliver for our clients.

NCI’s presence in both NSW & ACT have reached new heights under Sam’s leadership. This has been achieved through a focus on providing exceptional client service and raising awareness of innovative trade credit solutions available for businesses, ultimately to mitigate their credit risks and maximise growth opportunities.

Simon Chown is the General Manger of Victoria and Tasmania and joined NCI in 1994 in the Sydney office.

Over his extensive time at NCI Simon has managed the New South Wales branch, overseen, and supported development of the South Australian branch, West Australian branch, and Singapore office, including a period as NCI Sales Director, setting up initial training and recruitment programmes for the sales team and developing the sales formula.

Simon’s experience and knowledge enables him to support and assist the sales and service teams in the Victorian office.

Simon has a natural flair for the creation of innovative and effective solutions and structures for difficult and challenging risk and is the NCI representative for the International Credit Brokers Alliance (ICBA).

Renee Dobson is the General Manager for NCI’s QLD branch. Renee has spent her time in many roles throughout NCI including moving to NCI’s Auckland branch for 18 months heading up the service department.

Throughout her tenure, Renee has helped businesses in Australia and New Zealand strive by increasing their opportunities for success through insuring their most important asset. In Renee’s current role as General Manager, she brings her special set of skills not only to her customers, but she is also focuses on ensuring her passion transfers into her team around her, helping them to strive within the business.

Roger Armatys is General Manager – South Australia for NCI and began this role in 2018. Roger started developing his trade credit specialty skills with NCI in 2000 and enhanced these through a six year tenure in the London Markets between 2012-2018.

Creating, partnering and exploring trade solutions to improve risk management processes or improving working capital for businesses of all sizes from Global Corporates down to SME’s is his core strength.

His success is built from the strong client relationships held and to attention to detail to support partnerships with programs which are compliant and “fit for purpose’

Since 1998 Dan has been working in the Trade Credit Insurance industry. Over that time, he has held various consultancy and senior management roles.

Having also held a variety of underwriting roles in London, he knows both the broking and underwriting aspects of trade credit insurance, making him perfectly placed to tackle even the hardest of trade credit challenges.

Dan places his focus on the client and prides himself in his ability to identify areas that will add value to their business. Being able to negotiate with underwriters at the highest level has shown that he can deliver promising results.

Since relocating to Australia, Dan has developed many strategic relationships throughout WA, with both clients and business partners.

Stuart Anderson is CEO of NCI Brokers (Asia) Pte Ltd and is Director of NCI Malaysia Sdn Bhd. With over 20 years of credit insurance experience. He is an international broker who commenced his career with Trade Indemnity London before moving to RBS as an in-house credit insurance broker.

He emigrated to Sydney for a new business development role at Aon Trade Credit before moving to National Credit Insurance Brokers, Australia’s largest credit insurance broker. After 7 successful years he decided to broaden his experience and moved to Hong Kong as manager of Trade Credit and Political Risks Division of Cosmos, part of Japanese conglomerate ITOCHU.

Secondment followed to London to open the UK operation of Cosmos Credit and Political Risk. Finally, he has settled in Singapore running NCI’s Asia operations with clients throughout Asia.

Stuart has an Honours Degree from Leeds University Business School in Economics and Social History and is an Associate of Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance.

Zara Mends is the Managing Director of NCI New Zealand. Zara has over 16 years’ experience in the industry and has worked in Australia and New Zealand in Broking and Leadership roles.

She has an in-depth understanding of trade credit risk and experience in tailoring solutions for businesses to ensure they are protected, maximising the cover available and ensuring they are well informed about their debtors and market risks.