Search Results for: coronavirus

While APRA has asked big super funds and other institutions – and for them to ask their service providers – about their plans to deal with the pandemic – unnecessarily, one would have thought – the funds and their advisers are already onto the case as much as you could expect them to be. No-one… [Read More…]

When a 25-year-old English fund manager with £21 billion (A$37 billion) under management discloses it had made a sizable investment in bitcoin, it is bound to give the institutionalisation of the crypto currency a big kickalong. This is especially so when the manager regards bitcoin as a potential store of wealth and not an alternative… [Read More…]

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) reported a worse-than-budgeted deficit in the 2019/20 fiscal year, falling $5.6 million into the red largely on ballooning employment costs and a shortfall in adviser licensing revenue. According to the FMA annual report released last week, the latest deficit was about $850,000 above budget forecasts of $4.7 million. Employee expenses… [Read More…]

Almost all global pension investors expect post-COVID financial markets to follow a W path or play an accordion-like tune, a new survey has found. The study by UK-based research firm, Create, shows almost half of the respondents projected a W-shaped recovery ahead while 36 per cent forecast an accordion future featuring “a series of mini… [Read More…]

Despite the imminent release of vaccines, COVID-19 remains the number one threat to financial stability in the year ahead, according to a new study by The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC). The 2021 DTCC ‘Systemic Risk Barometer’, based on a survey of 220 financial institutions globally, found about two-thirds of respondents were concerned both… [Read More…]

The Wellington-based online investment platform, Sharesies is sounding out the Australian market for possible expansion. Brooke Roberts, co-founder of Sharesies, said the firm was currently recruiting for an Australian country manager. “We are looking at launching Sharesies in Australia,” Roberts said. “But at the moment we’re working on a product that might fit the market… [Read More…]

Large financial institutions could slash back-office trading costs by up to a quarter through automation, a new white paper by The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) claims. The DTCC findings, based on a survey of nine large global trading institutions, found automating seven key back-office processes could reduce costs by between 20-25 per cent…. [Read More…]

Central bank largesse lubricated the relatively squeak-free ride of the global asset management industry through the COVID-19 crisis to date but liquidity risks remain high, according to a new Amundi Asset Management report. In a ‘blue paper’ published last week, Amundi says only 117 out of the 35,000 funds sold in Europe froze redemptions since… [Read More…]

AMP Capital has lost another senior executive as its multi-asset group chief investment officer, Sean Henaghan, rounded off his 15-month sabbatical with a formal resignation last week. Henaghan, who has washed up in NZ following extensive travels through the Americas, was past due to rejoin the embattled Australian funds management group but has instead opted… [Read More…]

Rising NZ fintech firm, Invsta, has laid four critical growth strategies destined to shape the financial services industry over the next few years. In its inaugural report on technology and demographic trends likely to affect the sector, Invsta says financial services businesses must adapt to the rapidly changing environment. “Firms need to place the correct… [Read More…]

Retail investors have changed the dynamics of US share markets, according to a study by digital broking house, DriveWealth. The analysis by DriveWealth, which is the engine of several Australasian US share-trading platforms, found retail investors “have driven a shift in order timing” on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) this year. US equity orders… [Read More…]

Auckland-based fund administration business MMC completed a two-year shift to the cloud last week with its core systems joining Aegis services on the Microsoft Azure platform. Vedran Babic, MMC chief, said the cloud move would provide resilience, flexibility and scalability for the business, which grew substantially following the purchase of the Aegis platform from ASB… [Read More…]

The Financial Services Council (FSC) has canned its physical annual conference originally set down for next week, joining a swag of other COVID-canceled industry events in the community trust. In a release last week, FSC chief, Richard Klipin, said the industry body – now formally incorporating Workplace Savings NZ – had “taken the difficult decision… [Read More…]

Capital Group has an interesting suggestion: why not turn the standard portfolio construction view for investors on its head? Why not reverse the traditional beta-heavy core and alpha-seeking satellites of the portfolios of most big super funds? The global manager believes that putting active strategies at the core provides more flexibility, and, ultimately, a better… [Read More…]

Auckland-based investment boutique Generate sliced fees down across all funds in August to reflect growing scale benefits. After lowering fees on its growth products by between 3-5 per cent, Generate has set “lower fees for all funds from August 2020”, according its latest KiwiSaver report. Generate now manages over $2 billion, almost all of it… [Read More…]

AMP Capital will swing towards lucrative private markets as its parent ASX-listed financial services firm seeks to regroup after a disastrous couple of years. In a move that will see a reorientation of its listed markets fund business, Francesco De Ferrari, AMP chief, outlined the new private asset strategy for AMP Capital along with the… [Read More…]

Perhaps a major risk for media outlets is to spend too much time examining the risks associated with COVID-19 and not enough time on everything else going on in the world. Research Affiliates has done an analysis of the risks which may thwart a global recovery from the pandemic. Campbell Harvey, a partner and senior… [Read More…]

The US robo-advice industry has sustained good health through the coronavirus emergency following a blockbuster 2019, a just-released research report shows. In line with other direct-to-consumer investing platforms, the top US robo-advice providers thrived as the pandemic rolled on, according to the Backend Benchmarking study. “While the COVID-19 crisis sparked a period of historic market… [Read More…]

Aon will repay all global staff hit by a coronavirus-related emergency 20 per cent salary cut imposed from May to the end of June. In a recent note, Aon says the 20 per cent pay cut that affected most of the group’s 50,000 employees (including those in NZ) would be reimbursed plus 5 per cent… [Read More…]