The fallout from the South Canterbury Finance receivership continues as those indebted to the finance company look for clarity on loan repayments.

South Canterbury folded on Tuesday, but is covered by a Government guarantee. It’s expected to take several years to realise all the company’s remaining assets.

Federated Farmers President Don Nicolson says the farming sector may have been unduly fingered for SCF's demise.

"I want some clarity on what is the loan book into the rural sector.

"If you look at the media around the rural sector, it looks like it’s a dominant farming meltdown, most of the bad loans are farming related – it might not be."

Mr Nicolson praised the Government for its timely intervention in the process.

"In the end it looks like after the Government has assessed everything from the helicopter view, so to speak, they thought this was the appropriate course of action, and the 35,000 investors should be very happy the Government acted when they did.”

South Canterbury chief executive Sandy Maier says the Government guarantee was one of the few positives to come out of the receivership.

"That’s great news they actually expanded the coverage in the end, and they acted swiftly, and they’re dealing with those problems.

It’s been a great result for us and we always felt that the guarantee would be effective, and would work, and it gave us great comfort when we were refunding and running down the loan book.”

Mr Maier says Tuesday’s receivership wasn’t unexpected.

“I think people always understood it was an option, people all along were saying, you know ‘it’s an impossible job’.

"My job was to reduce the size of the business, clarify management processes, and shrink the business while running a sales process to find more equity.

"We’ve been doing the things that good turnaround management demands. We didn’t quite get it across the line, but sometimes that happens."

 The ramifications of South Canterbury’s demise will be felt hardest in the province and in the wider South Island

Along with his personal stake in dozens of farming companies, it’s thought Allan Hubbard’s rural lending portfolio exceeded $250m.

The most heavily indebted lenders were those who had made dairy conversions.

New Zealand Large Herds chairman Bryan Beeston says the Government guaranteed receivership will be welcomed by many of those debtors, who he says wouldn’t have the means to repay.

“Allan and South Canterbury have essentially been financing second tier, risky borrowing.

Normally if you’re a good risk, you go to your bank, whereas he’s taken on a lot of those second tier new conversions or people outside bank criteria. They’ve paid a slightly higher interest rate, and at the end of the day they haven’t done as well."

Mr Beeston says the real measure of South Canterbury’s failure will be when receivers McGrath Nicol come to sell off assets.

"It will certainly make some ripples. The biggest problem New Zealand has right now is that no Kiwis have any money.

"The only people we see looking at buying farms at the moment are foreigners."

"The last 18 months have been hard, and a good farm today will cost you around 18 million dollars – so we’re talking big cash – and no-one has it.”

The Government has paid $1.6b on the South Canterbury bailout. It’s estimated it will recover around $1b of that in realising the company’s assets.