INFINZ Conference returns to Cordis, Auckland on 13 October 2026 with registrations already open

A confirmed date, a confirmed room block

The Institute of Finance Professionals New Zealand (INFINZ) has locked in its annual conference for Tuesday 13 October 2026 in Auckland. The date appears in three separate places on the organisation's own website: the INFINZ homepage, the conference programme page, and the conference registration page. Registration is open now, with a bulk-registration pathway for organisations sending six or more people.

The venue is Cordis, Auckland. INFINZ has not yet published a standalone 2026 venue line, but its conference accommodation page names the Cordis as the conference hotel and sets a delegate booking window running from Friday 9 October to Thursday 15 October 2026. That window brackets the conference date exactly. The Cordis also hosted the 2025 conference on 14 October and the 2024 conference on 15 October, so the 2026 event continues an established pattern rather than moving house.

What is not yet public is the programme. The conference landing page states only that further details will be announced from May 2026, and the programme page currently redirects readers to the 2025 line-up as a reference point. Speakers, session titles and running times for 2026 are therefore unconfirmed at the time of writing.

Who runs it

INFINZ describes itself as an individual member-based organisation for people in finance roles and the wider New Zealand financial sector ecosystem, with more than 2,000 members nationally. It was formed on 9 May 2002 from the merger of the NZ Society of Investment Analysts, incorporated in 1976, and the NZ Society of Corporate Treasurers, formed in 1988 in response to the floating of the New Zealand dollar. Its own published history records membership growing from just under 600 at the merger to 1,000 by 2015 and past 2,100 by 2022, with conference registrations moving from around 200 in 2011 to over 400 by 2016 and 2018, and more than 600 for the virtual conference in 2020.

The institute is run day to day by a small executive team based in Martinborough, led by Executive Director Jim McElwain, with a Chief Operating Officer, an events manager and membership and marketing staff. Its board is chaired by Will Goodwin, Co Chief Investment Officer at the NZ Super Fund, with Sarah Minhinnick of New Zealand Green Investment Finance as deputy chair, and directors drawn from ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Kiwibank, Craigs Investment Partners, Freightways, Hunter Campbell and Deloitte. INFINZ also lists the major trading banks, the large accounting and law firms, NZX and several universities among its partners. That board composition is the clearest signal of the conference's standing: this is the trade gathering of the people who run New Zealand's wholesale finance and capital markets.

One point of clarification for anyone scanning INFINZ listings. The institute runs two flagship events, and they are not the same thing. The INFINZ Awards is a black-tie evening dinner held in May, most recently the 24th Awards on 14 May 2026, with the next edition listed for 13 May 2027. The conference is a separate full-day October event. The 2025 Awards were held at Shed 10 on Queens Wharf, a different venue entirely. Anything published about the October event should not be conflated with the awards evening.

Who it is for, and what the day looks like

INFINZ pitches the conference at delegates seeking strategic knowledge and thought leadership, and puts the peer group at more than 450. The 2025 edition gives a reliable picture of format. It ran from a 7.00am registration through a sponsored breakfast panel, a mihi with Ngāti Whātua, and then a single-stream day of plenary sessions and panels, wrapping at about 5.25pm before cocktails from 5.30pm. Sessions in 2025 covered global and domestic economics, AI and big data, technology entrepreneurship, infrastructure funding, the Māori economy, a major bank CEO panel and a closing formal debate on asset recycling. The MC was broadcaster Miriama Kamo. INFINZ also publishes a list of attending organisations and runs a student scholarship stream for the conference.

On that evidence, the 2026 event should be read as a one-day, single-stream, plenary-heavy conference with a breakfast session at the front and a networking function at the end, rather than a multi-day exhibition-style congress. Delegates are overwhelmingly domestic: bankers, corporate treasurers, CFOs, investment managers, capital markets lawyers, regulators and professional services advisers.

The venue, and how delegates will move

Cordis, Auckland sits at 83 Symonds Street in the uptown fringe of the CBD, near Upper Queen Street and Karangahape Road. Auckland Convention Bureau lists it with 640 guestrooms and suites, roughly 2km from the CBD and about 25.5km from Auckland Airport. Its Great Room is 1,160 square metres and takes 800 banquet, 1,100 theatre or 1,000 cocktail, and divides into four smaller rooms; the hotel also offers the Crystal Ballroom, the Jade Room and a set of smaller gallery and boardroom spaces. The addition of the 17-floor Pinnacle Tower has made it New Zealand's largest hotel by room count. A single-stream day for 450-plus delegates plus a breakfast session and an evening cocktail function fits comfortably within that footprint without needing an offsite room.

One material change since the 2025 conference is transport. Auckland Transport confirmed on 6 August 2026 that the City Rail Link will open to passenger services on Sunday 13 September 2026, a month before the conference, with new underground stations at Te Waihorotiu, Karanga-a-Hape and Maungawhau and trains running through the city centre rather than terminating at Waitematā. Karanga-a-Hape Station serves the Karangahape Road area immediately adjacent to the hotel's uptown location, so October 2026 will be the first INFINZ Conference where a substantial share of Auckland-based delegates can arrive by rail close to the door. Auckland Transport has also flagged connecting bus timetable changes from 13 August 2026. INFINZ has arranged delegate accommodation at the Cordis for stays between 9 and 15 October, which matters mainly for the Wellington and Christchurch contingent, both of which INFINZ services with standing regional committees.

Why it matters in New Zealand business events

This is a stable, repeat, city-hotel conference with a fifteen-year documented run of programmes on the organiser's site going back to 2013, a consistent October slot, a consistent venue since at least 2024, and a delegate base of several hundred senior professionals who book accommodation and dine out around the event. It is not a bid-won international congress, and it will not shift the national conference numbers on its own. What it does represent is the dependable domestic association business that Auckland's hotel-based venues rely on between larger events: known dates, known scale, known room block, booked a year ahead. For the 2026 edition, the open question is simply the programme, which INFINZ has said it will release from May 2026.