• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Subscribe
  • Twitter
  • RSS Feed

Investment News NZ

Investment News provides financial advisers news stories from the financial industry in New Zealand. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter.

  • Home
  • News
  • Kiwisaver
  • Subscribe
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Investment News / Fidelity Life swaps managers on $20m local shares mandate

Fidelity Life swaps managers on $20m local shares mandate

June 1, 2020

Nadine Tereora: ex Fidelity Life chief

Mint Asset Management has won a $20 million Australasian equities mandate from Fidelity Life after a tender process.

The win sees incumbent, Nikko Asset Management, vacate the spot on the Fidelity Life insurance fund panel.

Fidelity has about $260 million in its statutory fund backing underlying life insurance liabilities. Aside from Nikko, Fidelity also used NZX-owned SuperLife and Vanguard Australia as investment managers, according to the life insurer’s 2019 report.

In October 2018 the NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) paid $100 million for an approximately 41 per cent stake in the long-established local life insurance player. Mint also runs a $360 million plus NZ equities portfolio for the NZS.

Also last week in a surprise move, Fidelity chief, Nadine Tereora, resigned effective immediately after just three-and-a-half years with the firm. Tereora wanted to “spend more time with her family”, according to a Fidelity release.

Fidelity named chief distribution officer, Adrian Riminton, and chief financial officer, Simon Pennington, as interim co-chiefs. The insurance firm recently appointed Nicola Greer to the board, which had seen the exit of independent directors, Carole Durbin and Anne Blackburn, within the past 18 months.

Brian Blake, Fidelity chair, said in a release that: “[Greer] joins at a particularly pivotal time for the business, characterised by regulatory changes, company-wide transformation and, more recently, the challenges posed by Covid-19.”

Fidelity booked $13.6 million of underlying profit in the 2019 financial year, down almost $6 million on the previous annual period. But after adjusting actuarial assumptions to account for the fall in the NZ government bond rates, total profit jumped to $20.7 million – beating the 2018 result by $1 million (or $4 million including a $3 million write-down on a failed technology project).

Blake says in the 2019 report that Fidelity had since rebooted its technology rebuild.

“In 2019 we established and commenced delivery of our new technology roadmap, which aims to lift productivity, simplify our complex legacy systems and deliver a superior customer experience,” he says. “We’ve named this transformational project ‘Watson’ in honour of the entrepreneurial spirit of our founders, Gordon and Shirley Watson.”

Watson is also the name of IBM’s famous artificial intelligence system.

Furthermore, Fidelity was “exploring ways to diversify our channel mix in a way that complements our independent adviser channel”, Blake says.

“This work becomes even more important in the face of an ambitious regulatory change agenda being largely driven by low levels of consumer trust in traditional life insurance models and brands,” he says. “… Successfully navigating change and securing the company’s future will require significant investment in our brand and technology, in particular, and requires patience from shareholders. Because of the need for investment the Board has made the prudent decision not to pay a dividend this year.”

 

Twitter0
LinkedIn0
Google+0
Facebook0

Read More » Investment News

Recent articles

  • New Salt suite to spice up fund mix January 17, 2021
  • Wealth head quits ASB for Tower job; Platinum loses Asia manager; Matterson moves from Milliman January 17, 2021
  • Westpac follows ANZ with Northern Trust mandate… January 17, 2021
  • … as Trust Management wins over another senior BT investment hand January 17, 2021
  • Capital ventures into BlackRock’s ETF territory January 17, 2021
  • Fresh CIO role as South Pacific aims for co-investments January 17, 2021
  • Lessons from 2020: don’t stop thinking about tomorrow January 17, 2021
  • SSGA to push big firms on ESG, stays mum on merger January 17, 2021
  • Low-carbon switch: why electric future turns on listed infrastructure investor January 17, 2021

Primary Sidebar

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Learn More »

Most Recent Investment News

New Salt suite to spice up fund mix

January 17, 2021

Wealth head quits ASB for Tower job; Platinum loses Asia manager; Matterson moves from Milliman

January 17, 2021

Westpac follows ANZ with Northern Trust mandate…

January 17, 2021

… as Trust Management wins over another senior BT investment hand

January 17, 2021

Capital ventures into BlackRock’s ETF territory

January 17, 2021

Search by Keyword

Investment News

  • New Salt suite to spice up fund mix January 17, 2021
  • Wealth head quits ASB for Tower job; Platinum loses Asia manager; Matterson moves from Milliman January 17, 2021
  • Westpac follows ANZ with Northern Trust mandate… January 17, 2021
  • … as Trust Management wins over another senior BT investment hand January 17, 2021
  • Capital ventures into BlackRock’s ETF territory January 17, 2021
  • Fresh CIO role as South Pacific aims for co-investments January 17, 2021
  • Lessons from 2020: don’t stop thinking about tomorrow January 17, 2021
  • SSGA to push big firms on ESG, stays mum on merger January 17, 2021
  • Low-carbon switch: why electric future turns on listed infrastructure investor January 17, 2021
  • Bitcoin: the nonsensical asset that makes sense for the times January 17, 2021

Investment News Archive

Most Popular Articles

  • Westpac NZ flags retail advice sale to Forsyth Barr posted on October 19, 2020
  • The horror year in technicolour: free KiwiSaver 13 report released posted on September 30, 2020
  • NZ share-trading splurge could trigger tax alarms… posted on October 5, 2020
  • Flint set to spark platform competition posted on August 17, 2020
  • Four to the core: Smartshares to expand, rearrange and reprice ETFs posted on June 22, 2020
  • Kitset KiwiSaver scheme set to unwrap in spring posted on April 27, 2020
  • Funds eye bargains, self-shoppers hoard cash, KiwiSavers turn conservative posted on March 15, 2020
  • AMP Capital NZ chief quits amid equities exodus offshore posted on August 28, 2020

Sponosored Content

David-Boyle

On the industry play-list: four chart-topping regulations for 2021

David-Boyle

Charge of the lite (advice) brigade

Nathan Field

Pandemic Baby Boom a Bust

Star-date 2020: it’s inflation Jim but not as we know it

Quick-links to Popular News

  • FAP Compliance
  • Coronavirus
  • New Appointments
  • Financial Markets Authority (FMA)
  • Kiwisaver
  • Climate Change
  • Crypto Currency
  • Blockchain
  • Insurance

Secondary Sidebar

Recent News

  • New Salt suite to spice up fund mix January 17, 2021
  • Wealth head quits ASB for Tower job; Platinum loses Asia manager; Matterson moves from Milliman January 17, 2021
  • Westpac follows ANZ with Northern Trust mandate… January 17, 2021
  • … as Trust Management wins over another senior BT investment hand January 17, 2021
  • Capital ventures into BlackRock’s ETF territory January 17, 2021
  • Fresh CIO role as South Pacific aims for co-investments January 17, 2021
  • Lessons from 2020: don’t stop thinking about tomorrow January 17, 2021
  • SSGA to push big firms on ESG, stays mum on merger January 17, 2021
  • Low-carbon switch: why electric future turns on listed infrastructure investor January 17, 2021
  • Bitcoin: the nonsensical asset that makes sense for the times January 17, 2021

Footer

Copyright ©2020 InvestmentNews.co.nz — All Rights Reserved ·— Terms & Conditions