Milford Asset Management is vying with Fisher Funds for bragging rights as the third-largest retail manager in the land, according to new Plan for Life (PFL) figures.
The PFL second quarter NZ retail funds report shows Milford lying just $80 million shy of Fisher as at June 30 with more than $20.1 billion under management.
Over the 12 months to the end of June, Milford closed a roughly $1.8 billion gap between Fisher, which jumped up the tables after acquiring Kiwi Wealth in 2022.
During the June quarter alone, Milford gained about $770 million on its Takapuna-based rival, growing 2.3 per cent for the three-month period while Fisher went backwards -1.1 per cent, the PFL report shows.
The Milford market share grew from 9.5 per cent at the end of June 2023 to 10.1 per cent 12 months later as Fisher dropped from 10.6 per cent to 10.2 per cent.
Meanwhile, both of the two largest managers – ANZ and ASB – experienced size-wobbles during the 12-month period with sub-par growth-rates.
ANZ saw its market share fall from 18.2 per cent in June 30 last year to 16.9 per cent in the latest PFL reading – including the worst peer group June quarter growth-rate of -1.3 per cent.
Nonetheless, the blue bank still managed more than $33.6 billion in retail funds by period-end compared to $21.1 billion for second-placed, ASB, which saw flat quarterly and mediocre annual growth-rates of 0.1 per cent and 7.3 per cent respectively.
“All of the main companies reported [12-month] increases in their funds under management including in particular Mercer (43.2%), Simplicity (21.0%), Milford (20.6%), Booster (15.8%), BT / Westpac (14.0%) and FirstCape (10.5%) who all reported double digit percentage increases,” the PFL report says. “The Top 3 market leaders ANZ (4.9%), ASB (7.3%) and Fisher (9.1%) also all finished higher.”
The anonymous group of ‘others’ outside the 10 named managers in the table also collectively reported the highest quarterly growth-rate of 6.2 per cent: over the 12-month period, the same group was up 16.3 per cent versus the market average of 13 per cent.
“Gross annual Inflows to June totalled NZ$39.7bn, which year on year was up significantly by 18.5%,” the survey says. “BT/Westpac (-21.8%) reported a decrease in its annual Inflows but those of all the other leaders were higher with in particular some very large percentage jumps being recorded by Milford, FundRock, Kernel and Simplicity.”
Total NZ retail assets under management verged on $200 billion by June 30, closing the period at $198.7 billion including about $112.6 billion in KiwiSaver money and almost $76.5 billion in non-super funds.
In an a rare off-trend move, the KiwiSaver share of the NZ retail funds market shrank from 57.1 per cent as at March 31 to 56.7 per cent on June 30 as non-super managed funds rose from 37.9 per cent to 38.5 per cent.
The KiwiSaver market grew 0.8 per cent in the June quarter and 15.2 per cent for the 12-month period compared to respective growth-rates of 3.2 per cent and 11.7 per cent for regular retail funds, the PFL report says.