Nutrien Financial bridges economic and agronomic decisions
Published: Aug 19, 2022
As global circumstances cause growers to search for better ways to manage their farm, remain competitive and improve working capital, Nutrien Financial remains committed to providing insights and services to customers and increasing awareness of its program offerings, so growers know what resources are available to help them.
“As a supporting business of Nutrien Ag Solutions, we must always look for new and innovative ways to support our customers’ businesses,” says John Maman, Director of Nutrien Financial Sales and Marketing. “We want to approach this in a way that ties financing more closely with crop planning. It’s critical to know that with every decision there should be both an agronomic and an economic component.”
Nutrien Financial collaborates with Nutrien Ag Solutions strategic suppliers to provide a variety of low-rate promotional financing offers to growers. In addition, the group offers its own bundled financing structures. This bundled model provides a simpler way to optimize purchasing and working capital management decisions.
Growth and Advancement
Nutrien Financial has also been working to make certain processes, such as online credit applications, easier for growers. Customers can complete their credit applications at their convenience and in the privacy of their own home, get faster credit approvals through an autoscoring program and obtain access to all related account information online. These technological process improvements translate to more time that can be spent in the field.
The move to digital also allows Nutrien Financials' territory sales managers to provide their customers with more detailed reports on the economics surrounding effective strategies for taking advantage of financial programs.
“We rely on leveraging these technological advancements because it makes us more efficient and we become easier to do business with. This has allowed us to take a more relationship-centric approach, which improves our growers’ experiences,” says Willie Linder, Director of Nutrien Credit Retail.
Always evolving and innovating
As Nutrien Financial has grown over the years, one of the challenges the group has encountered is designing financing programs in a manner that accounts for variables, such as differences in growing seasons, crop types, cash flow needs, across the US retail business. Andrew Gallagher, Director of Nutrien Financial Product Development, says that field input has been crucial to navigating these differences. For example, based on feedback from our branches and customers, Nutrien Financial created specific peanut fungicide financing programs and added February payment term options for seed and crop protection programs to better accommodate financing needs in the south region.
“Nutrien Financial is a small, dynamic and entrepreneurial team. It’s been extremely rewarding to have this group of folks that’s been able to achieve as much as we have,” says Loren Hill, Vice President of Nutrien Financial. “We are a growing team, so we’re excited to continue to attract talent that will help us continue to provide innovative financial offerings for our customers.”