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…]

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…]

More than half of people saving for retirement could change investment settings based on how companies act during the coronavirus era, according to a new State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) study. The SSGA survey found that 55 per cent of almost 3,500 savers it polled across five jurisdictions would re-evaluate their investments in light of… [Read More…]

The NZX-listed Smartshares funds saw traded value more than triple year-on-year in the first half of 2020. According to bespoke figures supplied by the NZX, over $1.2 billion of Smartshares exchange-traded funds (ETF) units changed hands in the six months to June 30 compared to just $360 million in the same period last year –… [Read More…]

NZ financial market participants remain in a marginal risk-on mood despite a record run-up in prices, a new Harbour Asset Management survey has found. The inaugural Harbour survey found 40 per cent of the 80 respondents would recommend adding riskier assets to portfolios with the remainder almost equally split between doing nothing and pulling back…. [Read More…]

Even before the global economy went viral this March, the Reserve Bank of NZ (RBNZ) was softening up the market for negative interest rates – or least the idea of it. For instance, the RBNZ touted the prospects of a below-zero official cash rate (OCR) in a paper on unconventional monetary policy published in May… [Read More…]

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) will establish a new top table executive role with oversight of the local investment industry. With funding set to increase by about $7 million this financial year, the FMA is now able to splash out on senior staff including the imminent director of investment position. In a recently released job… [Read More…]

Fund manager business risks have spiked upwards during the coronavirus crisis with further fall-out likely as the shockwaves reverberate, according to a new Mercer NZ paper. The ‘Riders on the storm’ report, authored by Mercer NZ head of consulting David Scobie, says the COVID-19 market disruption has put a strain on fund management business models… [Read More…]