Archives for 2018

The Australian regulator has given institutions another incentive to slim down their wealth management operations following the release of a damning report on so-called ‘vertically-integrated’ financial advice models last week. As the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Report 562 notes, over the last 12 months or so all of the country’s major banks have… [Read More…]

Iwi investment entities had become increasingly diversified over 2017 with some local fund managers benefiting from the move, according to a new report on the sector, in a year that saw assets jump by almost $2 billion. The Wellington-based TDB Advisory 2017 review of iwi investments found at least three groups – Ngāti Porou, Raukawa,… [Read More…]

Mercer has tapped into the burgeoning demand for responsible investment (RI) options, raising more than $70 million since releasing a range of three wholesale products in NZ late last year. Russell Garrett, Mercer NZ head of institutional wealth, said the suite of three environmental, social and governance (ESG) themed funds go beyond the now-standard bombs… [Read More…]

Harbour Asset Management has snared one of Australia’s most influential financial services figures to front a dual-city presentation in NZ next month. Jeremy Cooper, whose 2010 review sparked major reforms of Australia’s superannuation system, has dates set in Wellington and Auckland this March to discuss what NZ could learn from the resurgent annuities market across… [Read More…]

Investors need a new fee calculation method that more fairly rewards alpha-generation by hedge funds, a recent paper published by the CFA Institute argues. According to the study authored by Tanuj Khosla, investors have generally failed to rein in hedge fund fees despite devising a raft of quantitative and bespoke qualitative techniques. “… a vast… [Read More…]

Screening on a fund manager database is the first step in the manager-selection process, enabling investors and consultants to narrow down a large universe of strategies, eVestment, the big database provider, suggests. But Stephen White, eVestment’s marketing manager for the EMEA region, says that there is no single ‘bullet-proof’ or ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to manager selection…. [Read More…]

Among financial planners, at least, on average there appears little value in trying to enhance their clients’ portfolio returns through manager selection, new research by Research Affiliates shows. While the big asset consulting firms will dispute this from their own experience – and with some evidence to back it up – the ‘retail’ market results… [Read More…]

Cash and actively-managed alternative assets look to be the favoured strategies for the year ahead, according to a new global survey of institutional investors. The BlackRock ‘Global Institutional Rebalancing Survey’, which canvassed 224 large investor clients representing a collective US$7.4 trillion, found 65 per cent of respondents planned to keep cash levels static during 2018…. [Read More…]

NZ income funds have delivered almost double the returns of pure bond markets over the last year, the latest Melville Jessup Weaver (MJW) investment survey reveals. In a new wing of its diversified fund sector analysis MJW found the group of five NZ-based income products returned a median 9.2 per cent over the 2017 calendar… [Read More…]

Institutional investors remain dubious about NZX plans to attract smaller company listings via a dual level disclosure regime under its proposed new listing rules. Most of the five funds management groups submitting on the NZX draft rules rejected the plan allowing listed companies to comply with either ‘premium’ and ‘standard’ rules. The NZX proposal, intended… [Read More…]