Glen Brennan
 Glen Brennan
Alumni
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"Glen Brennan, recipient of the 2005 NAB Indigenous Scholarship is using his MBA to benefit others who have traditionally struggled to make ends meet. Brennan is a first-class example of how an MBA scholarship can benefit the Australian community as a whole."
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Just three years out of his MBA, a Melbourne Business School graduate is managing a $100 million portfolio at National Australia Bank that helps low-income earners to start-up businesses.
Since being established 18 months ago the program, which offers unsecured loans of between $500 and $20,000, has issued around 120 loans worth more than $2 million.
According to Glen Brennan, NAB's Community Finance and Development Manager, the program is the first of its kind in the world.
Brennan (34y/o), Aboriginal Australian, program manager, MBS alumni and a former professional footballer is one of a kind.
He looks after the micro-enterprise loans, which are extended to people who don't meet the bank's normal business lending criteria-people without assets or a long trading history. Key clientele include: Indigenous Australians, new migrants, single mums and young Australians or people just down on their luck who need a chance to get back on their feet.
The loans have an interest rate of 9.95% and a default rate of 4%. Traditional business loans are around 17% but a more likely comparison would be against unsecured high risk personal loans, with interest rates of about 28%.
Moving from welfare to entrepreneurship
Brennan says, "In a lot of cases, these loans mean people can move from welfare dependency to having an independent income where hard work and business acumen are rewarded."
A recent success story involves a mother of three from rural Australia, who lived in rented accommodation on the edge of town and sold organic products at the local market.
She approached the banks for capital to start point-of-sale marketing and to update her website. But she had no trading history, no security and no formal business qualifications.
Brennan provided her with a modest amount of less than $6,000. She now sells all over Australia through a range of different stores and her income has gone through the roof.
He says that after joining the bank his first task was to investigate whether a product like this could actually work in Australia.
"There was no doubt that it's a fantastic program in developing economies like Bangladesh, where a relatively modest amount of $50 will allow you to buy a cow, milk it and sell the milk, then slaughter it when it gets old and sell the meat, to service the loan, but there is nothing like it in Australia. There was no playbook that I could read from.
"Our program had to offer an end-to-end process- it had to find, train and lend to clients, then make sure they had ongoing support in the form of a business mentor for up to a year after their loan was issued.
"We had to make sure we didn't set people up to fail. In the absence of equity we demand to see people's sweat equity-how much sweat they invested in their business concept. We want to make sure they do business training and they have a well thought out business plan, with a view that maybe in the long term they could go on and secure a normal loan from any bank, not just ours."
From professional footballer to Charlie's Angel
Brennan began his professional life (age 17) as a footballer playing Rugby League for the Canberra Raiders, while completing his BA at the University of Canberra.
"I did my degree with the view that I was not going to need it because I was going to be a famous footballer." But that changed as soon as a few injuries piled on me and the thing is, I wasn't that good," he laughed!!.
Charles Perkins, one of Australia's most vocal aboriginal activists, threw him a "lifeline" by taking him on as assistant from 1996 until when he died on the eve of the 2000 Olympic games. Brennan has since been described as the last of Charlie's protégés.
He says, his role with Charlie involved a tremendous learning curve that forged incredible community networks throughout Australia.
During that time he was based out of the Australian Institute of Sport and running the Australian Sports Commission's Indigenous Sport Program which was a mixture of elite and community programs.
"On the community side, the focus was to get indigenous people to participate in sport with a view to reducing anti-social behaviour and providing life skills such as, how to win or lose, how to accept the umpire's decision, team work, and co-operation.
"The other side was about working with national sporting associations to provide a pathway for more Cathy Freemans to succeed-so assisting indigenous people to achieve elite sporting goals, as opposed to them getting there despite the system."
Brennan says that towards the end of 2004 and a bit disillusioned with the methods of the public service he decided he wanted some new challenges but ones that would learn skills to better help his own community and other less advantaged parts of society.
"I decided it was time I tried something completely different. My skill set lay in social policy and government but I wanted to expand my experience beyond government and indigenous issues. Corporate Australia really interested me so I thought I'd do an MBA and see where it goes.
"I understood there were only two schools in Australia that you wanted on your resume if you had an MBA. I had heard nothing but good things about MBS and if I was going to do an MBA, I'd wanted to do it at the best school."
New start - twice over
Brennan started his MBA in 2005. At the time he was married with one 18-month old son, then his second son was born back in Canberra on the second day of his course. He now has three boys under five years old.
He says his favourite faculty member was Sam Wylie, but adds there were no bad lecturers. "They were all very good or great."
Brennan admits his resume would have presented any potential employer with a dilemma, yet despite this he was approached by two companies, both financial institutions.
"Here I was, a indigenous Australian, who's worked for Charles Perkins, run indigenous sports, named one of the Bulletin Magazine's smartest and most innovative 100 Australians in 2003 and awarded the Queen's Birthday Medal in 2005, and who was definitely not quite the banking type."
Despite this, after being recommended by a faculty member, NAB approached Brennan and offered him a deal.
Brennan claims his MBA has provided him with the technical skills and networks to make the micro-finance program a success.
"The MBA gave me the ability to look at things, analyse them, take out bits and pieces that didn't work [identify non-strategic elements] and reassemble the rest into a process that does work.
"It also gave me a great network of colleagues that bring a vast array of skills to my thinking-people that I can still call, three years after finishing my course, and ask ‘what do you think about this'."
He says he also still calls various faculty members for assistance, adding, I don't think I've ever shot an email to a faculty member and not had a warm and welcoming response within a couple of days at most, asking after the kids and how can they help me.
Also written up in BRW, May 21-27, p56
