Archives for February 2018

Pie Funds is set to launch a wealth advisory arm after snaring former Westpac financial planner, Simon Hepple, to head the venture. Mike Taylor, Pie chief, said another adviser was slated to join the Auckland-based Hepple in a few weeks as the wealth management operation goes live. Taylor said wealth management would be a complementary… [Read More…]

Labour and Green politicians rallied to support legislation introduced to Parliament by coalition partner NZ First last week to consider maybe creating a government-run and guaranteed KiwiSaver scheme. Opposition National members, however, argued the proposed law would merely create a wasteful “talkfest”. In the first reading last Wednesday of the KiwiFund bill, NZ First MP… [Read More…]

After a series of delays the NZX has further pushed out the investment platform boarding time for its first major client as a bigger deal with Hobson Wealth heads into the never-never. In its annual report released last week, the NZX says the group’s Wealth Technologies platform (formerly Apteryx) purchased in 2015 for $1.5 million… [Read More…]

A secret-shopping trip could be on the regulatory agenda this year – although Financial Markets Authority (FMA) general counsel, Nick Kynoch, won’t say for sure. While the FMA would be unlikely to signal the market if a mystery-shopper – also known as shadow-shopper – exercise was underway in the financial services industry, Kynoch said the… [Read More…]

NZ institutional investors have piled into two long-standing Australian-domiciled AMP Capital infrastructure funds for the first time as local interest in the asset class accelerates, according to the group’s NZ chief, Grant Hassell. In a statement last week, Hassell said more NZ investors were “seeking to increase their exposure to the [infrastructure] asset class” attracted… [Read More…]

Fixed income managers can no longer rely on duration as the 35-year old bond rally fizzles out, according to Mark Mitchell, director of recently-launched Australian boutique bond shop Daintree Capital Management. Mitchell, in NZ mid-March as part of the Heathcote Investment Partners ‘Meet the Manager’ roadshow, said the traditional long sovereign bond bet is likely… [Read More…]

Super fund members are missing out if their fund fails to adopt an integrated tax efficient approach to equity investing, according to global implementation manager Parametric, with a net benefits of up to 7.2 per cent a year over 40 years and multiple scenarios. Parametric’s latest study  tracks the experiences of three hypothetical super fund… [Read More…]

In a potentially feel-good, do-well move Russell Investments has redesigned its environment, social and governance (ESG) scoring process to pin down bottom-line, company-specific ‘material’ factors. In a paper released last week, Russell says back-testing of its tailored ESG rating system shows investors could “gain an additional 22 basis points (versus using the traditional ESG score)”…. [Read More…]

They never should have gone out of fashion, of course, at least not with big super funds, but with a return to relative normality with their growth trajectories and fully valued equities and bonds in most western countries, the big emerging markets (EM) buyers are back. According to Kimon Kouryialas, head of Pan Asia business… [Read More…]

Bank of China NZ (BOC) has hired well-known NZ funds management figure, Mark Ford, to run its nascent investment business. Ford joined BOC last week, replacing the bank’s former NZ head of family office, Eric Wei, who took up the newly-created position of director wealth management Asia with broking firm FNZC last November. In 2016… [Read More…]