The almost $3 billion Auckland boutique, Generate, has added to its senior compliance staff, sourcing specialists from Jarden and Milford Asset Management.
Generate hired Debbie Bourne and Shane Hinton as respective heads of compliance and risk, joining a team now headed by former Financial Markets Authority (FMA) general counsel, Nick Kynoch.
Bourne was previously Jarden director wealth compliance (with responsibilities for its majority-owned Harbour Asset Management) while Hinton served as Milford senior risk specialist.
Kynoch left the top legal job this February.
Henry Tongue, Generate chief, said a couple of compliance staff members had departed recently but the new appointments set the stage for a new phase of growth at the investment firm.
“We now have the platform to build out our offering,” Tongue said.
Most of the firm’s $2.85 billion in funds under management has come via the Generate KiwiSaver scheme with a dash ($15 million at the end of March) courtesy of a relatively new unit trust.
In November 2019 Generate launched the Growth Trust as a stand-alone fund, which Tongue said had not been promoted through affiliated advisers.
However, he said the manager planned to roll-out a full suite of unit trusts to complement its KiwiSaver offering.
“You need a good team to do that,” Tongue said.
Generate manages most local and fixed income assets in-house and about half of the international equities exposure: the remaining global shares allocation is spread among a panel of well-known offshore managers including T Rowe Price, Magellan, Platinum and Berkshire Hathaway.
Meanwhile in Australia last week, the ASX-listed financial services administration provider, Bravura, named former senior AMP Australia wealth executive, Steve Davison, as head of its robo-advice arm, Midwinter.
Bravura is marketing Midwinter to the NZ institutional market.
Most recently, Davison was adviser to Singapore robo-advice firm, Better Trade Off, following a long career at AMP that covered top dealer group and digital transformation roles. He replaces Jeff Hall who quit the role after a two-year stint this April.
In a statement, Bravura chief, Tony Klim, said: “In this new role, Steve is tasked to build on the combined Midwinter and Bravura offering, supporting the needs of existing and new clients and pursue opportunities to expand the Midwinter business in Australia and internationally.”
Davison, who also served as AMP Australia head of advice transformation at one point, officially finished at the embattled ASX-listed business in December last year.
And in shock departure last week, AMP Australia lost its current advice transformation program director, Jill Hopkins, who was brought in last December to guide the advisory business through a major overhaul.
“I acknowledge the challenges ahead but I can say I have never felt more welcomed and supported in any new job in my very long career,” Hopkins said in December.
Once the biggest advisory operation in Australia, AMP has seen an exodus of advisers in the wake of the Royal Commission into financial services a couple of years ago both voluntarily and through retrenchments. The flagship AMP Financial Planning group saw adviser number dip below 1,000 earlier this year, well down from its one-time peak above 1,700.
An AMP spokesperson said in a statement: “I can confirm that Ms Hopkins is no longer with the business. This is a project management role for which we will go through the process to find a suitable replacement.”