Former Kiwi Wealth chief, Ian Burns, has resurfaced as chair of NZ’s largest non-government funds management business.
Burns formally joined the ANZ Investments board mid-October, filling one of the independent director spots left vacant by the departure of Philippa Dunphy in July after serving almost a year in the role.
He quit Kiwi Wealth this February after six years at the helm of the now $7 billion plus investment firm.
Former ANZ wealth managing director, Craig Mulholland, also exited the ANZ Investments board in the same month as Dunphy with ANZ Australia head of wealth, Paul White, stepping in his place.
Fiona Mackenzie will take on the newly established ANZ head of funds management role next January, assuming some of the responsibilities previously held by Mulholland.
Prior to Kiwi Wealth, Burns served briefly as country head for Guardian Trust after a three-year stint as ASB general manager wealth and insurance.
Originally from the UK, Burns held several high-ranking bank positions there as well as Europe including managing director roles at Barclays Wealth, RZG Group and Abbey Group/Santander.
ANZ Investments boasts more than $35 billion under management with more than half sourced from its three KiwiSaver schemes.
However, the group has seen some changes of late with the wind-up of the $3 billion ANZ Bonus Bonds product (which counted as ANZ Investments assets under management) last year and the impending exit of perhaps $500 plus million of KiwiSaver default scheme money from December.
The approximately $2 billion ANZ Default KiwiSaver scheme will close to new members from December 1. In May this year the government relieved ANZ, along with four other providers, from default KiwiSaver duties.
But the ANZ funds business overall continues to thrive, according to chief investment officer, Paul Huxford, with positive flows from both retail and institutional clients.
Huxford said while retail and KiwiSaver represent the bulk of ANZ Investments business, the group was seeing good demand from wholesale and institutional investors for a range of asset classes.
For instance, while ANZ operates a global equities multi-manager portfolio it also offers some of the underlying strategies as stand-alone items with the listed infrastructure fund now available in that format via the OneAnswer series.
ANZ appointed Australia-based firm Maple-Brown Abbott to a global listed infrastructure mandate in 2019, growing the exposure from about $250 million at launch to $760 million plus today.
Huxford said ANZ investment performance had also held up well with the group’s flagship KiwiSaver scheme, for instance, recording above-median results in most risk categories and time periods in the just-released Melville Jessup Weaver investment survey.