Our Team

Russell Hutchinson
Director – MBA, GDipMktg

  • Russell founded Chatswood Consulting Limited. Russell is experienced at senior and executive management level with major financial services firms, and managing director and non-executive director level with distribution firms in New Zealand. Russell has broad expertise as a director and experience with financial services marketing, strategy, product design and compliance regimes and their requirements for management and directors of advice businesses. Russell is the driving force behind the Chatswood Consulting enterprise. Russell also co-founded Quality Product Research Limited, the company that runs Quotemonster. Russell's contributions to the industry have been acknowledged by the Financial Services Council. He was awarded the Chairman's Award for Service to the Industry at the 2022 FSC Awards, and the Shaping the Future award in 2017.

Frances Hutchinson
Director – BEng

  • Known as Fran to the Chatswood team. Fran is our database and visual basic expert, having been responsible for the development and support of the databases that contain our pricing data, news database, and product information resources, Frances provides data analysis skills and supervises the data capture and management work for larger quantitative research projects - such as robust whole of book pricing analysis. As the business has grown, Fran has also taken on the role of Director of Operations, guiding and co-ordinating work between the customer facing side of the business and the technology and data team.

Kelly Pulham
National Partnerships Lead – BSR, NCFS Level 5 in Financial Advice

  • Since joining the firm in 2009, Kelly has demonstrated outstanding commitment to our clients and is now our National Partnerships Lead, developing and maintaining relationships with the adviser groups, insurers, and re-insurers that we work with for both Quality Product Research Limited and Chatswood Consulting Limited. Her attention to detail makes her a real asset in getting the details of engagements right and helping us manage the growing portfolio of strategy, product, data, and new clients that work with us. 

Ed Foster
Data Scientist – BA

  • Ed Foster has joined the Chatswood team as our new data scientist in 2020 and has built up the role to include management of the Quarterly Market Data and Digital Advice Model services. Ed is highly skilled in statistics and analysis. He was awarded his Business Management degree from Kingston University as well as gaining other qualifications from Open University and University College London. Ed contributes to all aspects of the business with his data analysis work. His work on our adviser oversight tools, enabling more compliance to be managed using data, which we have been developing in conjunction with Steve Burgess of Compliance Refinery has been excellent.

Melissa Waddel
Corporate Data Analyst

  • Melissa joined the team in November 2020 as the new Administrator. From the general daily office duties to preparing and formatting reports, she helps with all the admin work to support the team and keep the office running smoothly as well as helping to tidy up and maintaining our databases. Melissa will be the person you work with for adviser client base valuations.

Kelly Olsen
Content Creator – BBus, Cert DM

  • Kelly joined the Chatswood team in May 2022, working part-time monitoring news, keeping our news database up to date and writing blog posts. Kelly has held a variety of marketing roles across the telecommunications and public transport spaces. Always on the lookout for interesting stories, reach out to Kelly if you have something you think would make a good feature on the blog.

Aneel Ravji
Advicetech Lead – BSc, GradDipBusStuds, NZCFS (Level 5)

  • Aneel has over 30 years’ experience in the life insurance industry.He has worked for Insurers in a variety of roles including Distribution, Training and Compliance. Aneel has held senior roles with a global insurer in Asia. Throughout his career his positions have generally focused on working closely with Financial Advisers.His role at Quotemonster is to assist Advisers with their advice process, using tools to provide the right outcomes for clients, in an easy and compliant manner.

Doreen Dutt
Research Manager – NZCFS (Level 5), PGDipSci

  • Doreen worked at Vero as a Domestic Underwriting Consultant before starting at Quotemonster in 2019.Chances are you will have spoken to Doreen if you have ever called our office – she is the friendly voice assisting advisers with their queries.The research database which runs the product comparisons on Quotemonster is what Doreen spends a lot of her time updating and maintaining to ensure it is kept current and accurate.

Kim Oliver
Research and Customer Support – NZCFS (Level 5) in NZDipHospMgmt

  • Kim has worked in the insurance industry since 2014.She has worked in a variety of roles for one of the largest insurers in the country and was even an adviser for 2 years! This has given her a varied and strong foundation of knowledge and skills. Kim is part of the Research team, helping to keep the Quotemonster research database up to date, as well as supporting advisers with their queries.

Albert Liu
IT Manager – BCs, BIT

  • Albert has spent over 15 years in the roles of systems engineering, IT consulting, and more recently IT management.Albert started his career with three years in China as the foundation and has been the genius behind keeping the monster crunching for the last eight years here at Quotemonster as the IT manager with a leading role in Server, Storage, and systems engineering.

Danica Li
Junior Front End Developer

  • Her role is to assist with keeping the monster running and looking his best, this includes our recent website refresh.

Sara Alani
Contract Researcher and Legal Consultant – LLB

  • Sara is an experienced product manager with over 15 years’ experience in the life and wider financial services sector.Sara started as one of our first researchers and continues to support us with Research development.Sara also holds a Bachelor of Laws and provides us with legal advice when required.

Dyan Fiedacan

  • Dyan works for us on contract every quarter providing research services and document analysis to assist our busy research team. 

Wanyi Yang
MIntFin, PhD

  • Wanyi Yang has a Master’s degree in International Finance and completed a Ph.D. in Accounting and Finance from Auckland University in 2018. While assisting with graduate teaching at Auckland University Wanyi also provides consulting services both domestically and internationally. Wanyi prepares our quarterly review of life and health sector financial results and industry indices.

Michael Larsen
BA

  • Michael is a talented copywriter, well-known freelance journalist, and author. He has published more than a dozen books.Most recently his history of the New Zealand Stock Exchange and New Zealand Steel have been well received. His excellent written communication experience has been employed in advertising, website developments, and investment statements in work for our clients.