Auckland, New Zealand, January 2026 — Sarah Blanche Kyle (née Martignier) has stepped into the role of Head of People Business Partnering at ASB Bank. In this position, she will lead the People Business Partnering function, supporting senior leaders across the organisation to deliver people strategies aligned with business performance, culture, and long-term growth.
Sarah joins ASB Bank with extensive international HR leadership experience across banking, transport, retail, real estate, and consumer-facing organisations. Immediately prior to this appointment, she served as HR Delivery Partner (FTC) at The Go-Ahead Group, where she was responsible for multiple strands of the HR strategy during a period of leadership transition, including employee engagement, employee experience, and people data and insights. Her work included defining and delivering an enterprise-wide engagement strategy and executing a large-scale engagement survey across multiple countries and languages.
Before this, Sarah was Head of Human Resources – CCF (Director-level role) at Travis Perkins plc, where she was part of the Group HR leadership team and the CCF senior leadership team. In this role, she led end-to-end HR delivery, advanced diversity and inclusion initiatives, strengthened learning and development through the rollout of a new LMS, and expanded apprenticeship and leadership development programmes across the business.
Her earlier career includes senior HR leadership roles such as Head of Human Resources at intu, where she led people strategy through a complex administration and transition period, and Head of People & Culture at BresicWhitney, where she served as an executive committee member driving organisation-wide talent, diversity, and culture transformation. She has also held executive-level HR roles at Winning Group and earlier in her career spent several years at Harrods, progressing through HR Business Partnering and leadership positions.
With deep expertise in strategic HR leadership, people analytics, employee engagement, and organisational change, Sarah’s appointment further strengthens ASB Bank’s people leadership capability.
About ASB Bank
ASB Bank is one of New Zealand’s leading financial institutions, supporting businesses with local and global ambitions through innovative banking solutions, insights, and expertise. ASB is committed to helping organisations grow sustainably by combining strong customer partnerships with forward-looking people and business strategies.
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