Dawn Toughey, owner and founder of Keyway Finance, is on a mission to demystify finance.

After two decades behind the scenes and across the counter of New Zealand’s financial services industry, Dawn Toughey has built something rare – a practice that puts the client’s understanding first.

There are people who fall into the financial world, and then there are those who spend 20 years learning every corner of it before deciding the time is right to go out on their own. Dawn Toughey is firmly the latter. The founder of Keyway Finance didn’t launch her advisory practice on a whim – she built it on a foundation that most advisers simply don’t have.

“I started in the financial services industry in 2006, beginning as a personal assistant,” she says.

What followed was a career that moved steadily through the operational backbone of the industry – office manager, regional operations supervisor, before transitioning into client-facing advisory roles.

“That foundation gave me a really strong understanding of how the financial services industry operates behind the scenes before I moved into advisory roles.”

Unique perspective

That behind-the-scenes perspective is precisely what sets Keyway Finance apart. Toughey has worked across banking, financial advice businesses, and alongside accountants giving her a deep understanding of how the wheels of businesses turn.

Add hands-on experience handling ACC claims, and what emerges is an in-depth 360-degree view of risk, and the structures clients need to protect themselves.

Toughey offers clients something increasingly scarce in today’s advice landscape: genuine breadth. Keyway Finance covers both mortgage finance and insurance. She has noticed a telling pattern among her clients – many arrive seeking help with one, and will return for the other. It’s the kind of trust that isn’t manufactured; it’s earned conversation by conversation.

“I want to empower my clients, give them options that fit their needs, their lifestyle, and their risk profile.”

Simple mission

Toughey launched Keyway Finance in 2025 with a deceptively simple mission: to simplify the process, and guide clients to decisions they both understood and felt confident about. In a market increasingly crowded with advisers offering one-size-fits-all solutions, her emphasis on personalised, empowering advice is a deliberate departure from the norm.

The clients walking through her door reflect a New Zealand property market in flux. Toughey is seeing a surge in clients navigating relationship separations – a population that requires careful, considered guidance as they reassess their financial positions from the ground up. At the same time, she’s witnessing something more encouraging: a generational shift in financial literacy.

“I’m also seeing a noticeable shift with younger buyers, more of them are engaging earlier, becoming financially literate, and really understanding their numbers before stepping into the market,” she says.

It’s a trend she welcomes. A third cohort is also emerging: new New Zealanders, those who have recently gained residency or citizenship and are eager to establish themselves through home ownership.

National reach

Based in Nelson, Toughey works with clients the length of the country. She values the richness of face-to-face connection with clients in her own region, but she’s equally at home advising someone in Auckland or Invercargill via video call. Technology, she says, has been transformative: what once required a client to travel, or an adviser to be local, now simply requires a good conversation and a reliable connection.

For Toughey, that’s not a compromise – it’s an opportunity to serve New Zealanders wherever they are in life, and wherever they happen to be on the map.

What ties her clients together is not their circumstances, but their need for clarity. In an industry that has too often prioritised product over people, Toughey’s approach is a quiet corrective – built on two decades of knowing exactly how the system works, and a firm conviction that clients deserve an adviser who helps them understand it too.

At Keyway Finance, the goal isn’t just to get clients across the line. It’s to make sure they know exactly why they’re there.

Dawn’s advice for prospective buyers

1. Know your numbers early.
   Understanding your income, expenses, and savings position before you start house hunting puts you in a much stronger negotiating position than you might expect.
2. Don’t assume you’re not ready.
   Many clients come to Toughey convinced they’re years away from buying – and discover they’re far closer than they think. Get the conversation started sooner.
3. Structure matters.
   How your lending is structured affects not just your repayments today, but your flexibility and options for years to come. It’s worth understanding your options and getting it right from the start.