ASB has revamped its KiwiSaver and investment offering again, dropping some underlying managers and finally cutting administrative links with an Australian former associated firm.
In changes revealed last week, the $20 billion-plus ASB dropped Mercer and Vanguard as underlying managers for its Positive Impact fund while handing BNP Paribas Fund Services a large chunk of custody and administrative business.
The ASB investment and admin shake-up follows the appointment of BlackRock last year to provide overarching portfolio management (including asset allocation) services to the bank-owned provider – replacing Mercer and some former Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)-owned subsidiaries in the roles.
BlackRock, which also holds several investment mandates for the ASB schemes, has taken over the respective global bonds and international shares portfolios from Vanguard and Mercer in the Positive Impact fund.
Specifically, the rebooted vehicle will invest into BlackRock’s iShares Green Bond Index and Global Impact funds.
The ASB Positive Impact strategy has accrued about $130 million since launch in 2019 including over $110 million sourced through the group’s KiwiSaver scheme.
As well as the new impact duties, BlackRock manages global equities, listed property and commodities (gold) for ASB: State Street looks after most fixed income assets plus Australasian equities while First Sentier runs NZ bonds and cash.
Fees for the mostly passive ASB funds ramp up along with increasing risk profile from 0.35 per cent for cash to 1 per cent for the impact option.
But the looming administrative shake-up represents a bigger move for ASB, which previously used a Public Trust nominee company for custody and the former CBA-owned Colonial First State as administrator.
According to scheme documents, Public Trust (acting as supervisor) has appointed BNP Paribas as custodian for most of the ASB funds while the existing Newburg Nominees entity will continue “to hold some of the unlisted assets of the Scheme on trust”
“We intend to appoint BNP Paribas Fund Services Australasia Pty Limited as an Administration manager of the Scheme, to provide investment administration services in place of Colonial First State Investments Limited,” the ASB product disclosure document says.
Both custody and admin changes have been set down for this August.
Adam Boyd, ASB head of wealth, said last year that:“Changing custody and administration would be a much bigger undertaking [than hiring BlackRock as portfolio manager].”