Former Trustees Executors (TE) chief operating officer, Geoff Rimmer, is fronting a new trans-Tasman back-office ‘buyers group’ open to NZ KiwiSaver providers and fund managers.
Rimmer, who ended a four-year stint at TE this February, said The Fund Alliance had already received indicative support from a number of NZ firms.
“I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the interest from both potential NZ clients and service providers,” he said. “The feedback I’ve had is that we’re on the right track.”
Under the proposed business model, The Fund Alliance would offer member firms access to ‘state of the art’ services from local and offshore providers covering functions such as administration, custody, data and other reporting duties including climate risk.
According to Rimmer, climate-reporting and environmental, social and governance tools would likely be first of The Fund Alliance tools to surface but the aim is to cover the gamut of investment manager services.
He said the co-operative model would allow members to collectively have the scale to access global services at competitive prices while offshore providers that may have skipped NZ on size concerns would have a viable entry point.
“Many service providers I’ve been talking to are interested in NZ but don’t know how to get the scale required to generate a return,” Rimmer said.
Members would pay a monthly fee to join the buyer group but also retain an equity stake with half of “all economic outcomes flowing back” to them, The Fund Alliance website says.
Rimmer said the business, due to formally launch early next year, would introduce a new level of competition and choice into the NZ and Australian investment services market.
Based on the Gold Coast, the ex TE COO previously ran an Australian advice dealer group, Financial Services Partners (FSP), which operated as similar co-operative buying model. He left FSP in 2011 to join Equity Trustees, working alongside Ryan Bessemer, who he later followed to TE.
As reported last week, TE has shifted to a new leadership arrangement with three divisional heads now reporting to board chair, Rob Russell, after Bessemer formally ended his five-year reign as chief executive.