New Zealand Harbours has selected AMP as replacement provider for its now-closed in-house KiwiSaver scheme. In a recent member newsletter, NZ Harbours says the AMP scheme offers: investment choice; member communication and online services, and; a “strong focus” on investment education. AMP also charges “fees which are at least the same as (and in most… [Read More…]
Investment News
Top-level staff on the move from Mercer
Mercer has lost two top executives with the exits of Steve Schubert, most-recently leader of strategic client partnerships and future opportunities, and Ray King, senior consultant private markets and alternatives in the group’s investment division. After four years with Mercer, Schubert, one of Australia’s leading actuaries, has made the move into funds management, taking up… [Read More…]
Fisher lays groundwork for more direct global bond, emerging markets exposure
Fisher Funds is shaping up to invest more in global fixed income and emerging market equities directly after altering guidelines in some of its offer documents. In the revised prospectuses for the almost $1.4 billion Fisher Funds Two KiwiSaver scheme, the manager says it is “likely that in future the Funds will invest some of… [Read More…]
Northern Trust wins sole asset servicing business at $70 billion Aussie super fund
Northern Trust has won out in the rationalisation by QIC of its asset servicing providers, replacing NAB Asset Servicing for the main back-office functions of the increasingly global manager. As reported last week, QIC had reviewed the use of both Northern Trust, which has provided mainly middle-office functions at QIC for the past few years,… [Read More…]
Harbour Views: Wheeler v Yellen – this time it’s different
Janet Yellen, chair of the world’s perennially most-powerful central bank, and Graeme Wheeler, governor of the 2015 ‘Central Bank of the Year’, issued monetary policy statements within hours of each other last week. Christian Hawkesby, Harbour Asset Management head of fixed income, explains why the issue time is about all the two central bank statements… [Read More…]
Stanley to leave NZX, FundSource cuts staff as qual taken off the menu
Sam Stanley, NZX head of exchange products, has resigned and will finish up in June, Investment News NZ (IN NZ) understands. Stanley’s resignation is understood to be unconnected to a raft of changes at the NZX-owned retail research house, FundSource, which also saw two research analysts made redundant. Last week the NZX revealed FundSource would… [Read More…]
FMA questions NZ banks on parental advice, gets answers from AFAs in inaugural survey
The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) is contacting local subsidiaries of Australian banks in the wake of the most recent financial advice scandals to hit across the Tasman. According to Kirsty Campbell, FMA head of supervision, the regulator has been “having conversations” with Australian-owned NZ financial institutions following a string of high-profile investigations into bank financial… [Read More…]
KiwiSaver set to hit 2.5m members, switching rate steady
KiwiSaver member growth is continuing at a solid clip with total membership edging 2.5 million, according to the latest Inland Revenue Department (IRD) statistics. Over the previous 12 months KiwiSaver member numbers grew 7.5 per cent to hit almost 2.49 million as at the end of March 2015, the IRD figures show. The membership figure… [Read More…]
Small DIMS get bigger under last-minute regulatory upgrade
Small-to-medium discretionary investment management service (DIMS) providers could be granted a reprieve under new threshold levels proposed by the financial regulator. The new proposals, sent out to the market last week by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), substantially lift the retail funds under management cut-off levels across all three tiers of the mooted DIMS regulatory… [Read More…]
Custodians wary of indigestion in ‘unique time for activity’
BNP Paribas Securities Services has won its biggest super fund client, the $50 billion UniSuper, in what is a “unique time for activity” for the asset servicing sector. More is to come with a record value of tenders having hit or about to hit the market. The BNP Paribas deal announced last week followed a… [Read More…]