A couple of ANZ underlying listed real asset managers are set to open portfolio investment entity (PIE) funds just six months after the bank-owned fund house exited the wholesale market.
Resolution Capital and Maple-Brown Abbott (MBA) – both Australia-domiciled managers – are on the PIE train with respective listed property and infrastructure funds on track.
MBA and Resolution run large mandates for the roughly $35 billion ANZ fund business (including $21 billion in KiwiSaver) in listed global infrastructure and real estate, respectively.
However, the sudden closure of the ANZ wholesale business last August closed the door to stand-alone investments in the underlying bank-badged single-sector PIEs for those clients – although the listed infrastructure and property strategies are available at retail rates via the bank’s OneAnswer suite.
The Sydney-headquartered listed real assets manager, Resolution, will be first-to-market with its PIE documents now live with MBA to follow in two to three weeks.
According to the product disclosure statement, Resolution is “an active manager and believes that the ultimate driver of returns from listed real asset securities is the quality and level of sustainable cash earnings generated by the underlying assets”.
Hosted by FundRock, the Resolution PIE carries an annual fee of 1.05 per cent and a minimum investment of $25,000. FundRock sister company, Apex, takes on administration and registry duties for the fund with BNP Paribas Securities Services in for custody and Public Trust as supervisor.
The Resolution, and imminent, MBA product forays in NZ follow the launch of a JP Morgan Asset Management global equities PIE last month in what was the first new scheme launch of 2025.
But already established schemes have also been working on new product lines this year including Pie Funds and the Apex-owned platform, InvestNow.
As reported last week, Pie and the InvestNow house fund brand, Foundation Series, entered high-growth mode with aggressive-style diversified strategies.
Simultaneously, Foundation has rolled-out two new PIEs backed by exchange-traded funds (ETFs) managed by Vanguard, and in a NZ-first, Charles Schwab.
The Foundation Global ESG Fund carries an annual fee of 0.1 per cent (plus a 0.5 per cent transaction fee) and feeds into a Vanguard-run ETF.
Foundation already offers a fleet of four Vanguard ETF PIE proxies investing into global and US equities (both available in hedged or unhedged varieties) that have accumulated almost $180 million since going live over the last couple of years.
InvestNow senior portfolio manager, Jason Choy, said the Foundation US Dividend Equity Fund is the first time an ETF run by the US firm, Charles Schwab, has been offered as a PIE to NZ investors.
Choy said the Schwab fund “is one of the most popular dividend ETFs in the world” with an annual price tag of 0.06 per cent (as well as the same transaction fees of 0.5 per cent).