Trent Franklin: making waves in the business world

Running your own business is challenging enough, but for young entrepreneur Trent Franklin, it is just one part of the equation. A managing director of Enrizen Insurance Solutions by day and vice-captain of the Australian waterpolo team by night, Trent pulls off a masterful juggling act, few can imagine.

Trent Franklin is founder and managing director of Sydney insurance company Enrizen. He’s also vice-captain of the national water polo team and has competed in two Olympic Games. All this and he’s not even 30 yet.

Mad on sport since his teens, Franklin knew a career as a professional water polo player wouldn’t see him out to retirement and always had business aspirations at the back of his mind. In 2003, already having represented his country on numerous occasions and with the Athens Olympics fast-approaching, he set up Enrizen with the goal of providing clients with the quality of cover and expertise they’d come to expect from a large international insurance brokerage, matched with the trusted service of a smaller, closer business partner. Having worked with some of the industry’s leading organisations prior to setting up on his own, Franklin has built a brokerage based on speed, efficiency and personalised service that delivers the best solutions to its clients, who range from micro businesses to blue chip companies.

Mixing business and sport

Juggling the two hasn’t been easy but Franklin has managed to transfer some of his sporting skills to the boardroom and vice versa. Dedication, hard work and taking pride in his performance are qualities he has applied equally to the office and the pool. When he was training for Beijing, Franklin would get up at 4.15am most mornings and head to the Olympic pool at Homebush. He’d then leave to get back to the North Sydney office at 7.30am and do a full day’s work before training again at 6.30pm.

As a youngster, Franklin never considered sport as a career. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do. “I wanted to be in the large shiny buildings of the corporate world but I wasn’t sure what doing,” he says. “Eventually I worked out that insurance broking and financial planning was my thing.”

When he started playing water polo for Australia, Franklin quickly worked out that he had access to a niche networking opportunity that could also benefit his business career. “Water polo’s a bit like rugby used to be. Everyone helps each other out. Sportsmen are very competitive so I’ve found that a lot of the people I’ve played water polo with have ended up being property investors and merchant bankers. I’ve ended up doing business with a lot of people I know through sport. It’s like a little club. I also have a whole bunch of people who are my mentors and over the years I’ve gone to them and asked them what I needed to do.”

Proudest moments

Franklin’s proudest moment in sport isn’t a difficult one. It doesn’t get much better than representing your country in the Olympics. Twice. But his proudest moment in business is a very different one. “I think it was when I realised I couldn’t do everything,” he says. “I’ve hired people who are good at what they do and these days I let myself take a step back and trust them to get on with it.”

Franklin’s team has grown from just him at the start, to 12 today. “Enrizen’s management team draws on decades of insurance and business experience, with a number of senior staff having worked at some of the world’s largest insurers at executive level,” he says. “Coupled with strong technical efficiencies by way of experienced operations staff, Enrizen ensures it maintains strict accordance to relevant legislation relating to insurance broking as it continues its growth.

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