Chloe Kyrke-Smith joins Tax Traders as Head of Product

Tax Traders, the New Zealand fintech built around provisional tax pooling, has appointed Chloe Kyrke-Smith as Head of Product. According to a trade report published in late July 2026, the role spans both Tax Traders and its sibling business Taxi, and adds a senior product voice to the leadership team as the company widens its focus beyond a single product.

Kyrke-Smith arrives with a career that sits close to the intersection of accounting and software. The same report says she joins from AI software company Blackpearl, where she was Vice President of Product. Before that she was Chief Product and Customer Officer at Flick Electric, and she spent close to a decade at Xero. She is a chartered accountant, and reporting describes more than 15 years leading product teams across SaaS, fintech and energy, with hands-on work across reporting, tax, bank reconciliation and invoicing. An exact start date was not stated in the coverage.

That background lines up neatly with where Tax Traders wants to go. The company was founded in 2012 by Nicola and Josh Taylor and made its name in tax pooling, an approach that lets taxpayers manage provisional tax more flexibly while reducing Inland Revenue interest and penalties. Its newer venture, Taxi, launched in 2024 and offers working capital by letting businesses borrow against provisional tax deposits already sitting at Inland Revenue. Together the two businesses point at a bigger idea: connecting tax, cashflow and everyday financial decisions for accountants and the small and medium businesses they serve.

The product brief reflects that direction. Reporting indicates Kyrke-Smith will lead product strategy across both businesses, joining the tax, cashflow and financial functions into something more like a platform than a set of separate tools. For a company that has largely been known for one thing, hiring a product leader who has built functions from the ground up reads as a deliberate step.

Tax Traders co-founder Nicola Taylor framed the appointment in those terms. “To do that well, you need exceptional product leadership, and Chloe is exceptionally well placed to provide it,” she said in the announcement. Taylor added that “when someone of Chloe’s calibre chooses to join your business, it’s a strong endorsement of where you are and where you are heading.”

Kyrke-Smith’s own comment kept the focus on customers. “I’ve always believed the best products come from understanding customers deeply and solving the right problems,” she said.

The context around the company helps explain the ambition. Tax Traders is a certified B Corp and was recognised among the country’s best places to work in 2024. Independent analysis has pointed to a large opportunity in this space, with a substantial pool of small-business provisional tax held at Inland Revenue and modelling that suggests meaningful productivity gains if flexible tax tools are widely adopted.

For a fintech moving from a well-defined niche toward a broader financial toolkit, product leadership is the part that turns intent into shipped features. On the strength of the public detail available, this hire is a considered one, and the next year of releases will show how the strategy takes shape.