Auckland-based investment administration pioneer MMC has broken through the $100 billion threshold, cementing its cornerstone position in the NZ financial services industry architecture.
In a release, MMC said the group hit the $100 billion funds under administration (FUA) mark last week as both its core investment services and recent wealth management platform acquisition soared over the last 12 months.
MMC bought the Aegis investment platform (at the time holding about $15 billion in FUA) from ASB late in 2019, merging it with the wider business last year under the MMC Wealth Administration brand.
Vedran Babic, MMC chief, said in the statement that the latest result was a “fantastic milestone” for the company after a combined (including Aegis) 20 years of effort.
“This is a result of many hard-working hands and creative minds coming together to get the job done. MMC’s founders Tom Reiher and Robert Moss had a vision to invest in proprietary technology, developed especially for New Zealand conditions, so that our clients could enjoy technology that could swiftly respond to their changing needs and the regulations,” Babic said. “We are poised to continue delivering technology innovation and operational efficiency that accelerate our clients’ success.”
Launched in 2005 as a NZ fund administration specialist – offering services such as asset valuation, unit pricing, accounting and registry – MMC has more latterly added custody and wealth administration (with Aegis) to its stack.
The MMC growth story has been fast-tracked by two fundamental plot developments in the NZ investment market: the emergence of the portfolio investment entity (PIE) and KiwiSaver regimes in 2007.
Both PIE and KiwiSaver require NZ-focused administration expertise where MMC has carved out a significant market share.
MMC has now quadrupled FUA since 2016 when the firm signed on its first KiwiSaver registry client (Simplicity), spurred on by organic growth and the Aegis purchase.
Rebecca Thomas, head of Mint Asset Management, said the now $2 billion plus manager was “excited to have been part of MMC’s journey since day one”.
“MMC has an outstanding track record of evolving its services in line with market changes or business requests; be it new regulatory requirements or accommodating the launch of a new fund,” Thomas said in the release. “We have seen a key advantage of the software being proprietary owned and developed by MMC. This accelerates time to market for new functionality, and enables bespoke features.
“Most importantly, MMC has an in-depth understanding of the New Zealand investment market with all the regulations and reporting requirements that keep changing.”
According to Babic, the now cloud-based business was targeting the next phase of growth where digital technology would be a “key differentiator”.
“We are also on track to start delivering digital and data insights services to further help support our clients’ investor experience,” he said. “And with our recent acquisition of IFAA in Australia, we look forward to establishing a bridge for our New Zealand clients to take their products to the Australian market.”
And another MMC client, Pathfinder, also celebrated a watershed moment last week, surpassing $100 million under management in its KiwiSaver scheme.
The-previously Takapuna-based boutique launched its KiwiSaver scheme in July 2019 under the CareSaver moniker, reverting to the Pathfinder brand earlier this year.
At the end of March last year, the ethical investment-styled Pathfinder KiwiSaver reported about $18 million under management, growing to $75 million 12 months later.
Pathfinder chief, John Berry, said in a statement that KiwiSaver scheme growth was on the back of strong investment performance and a groundswell of support for ethical investing principles.
“We are delivering on our mission for our ethical investing to grow individual wealth and collective well-being,” Berry said. “Ethical investing does not come at a cost, in fact we believe the opposite is true – accounting for environmental and social considerations should add to long-term financial returns.”
In March this year Pathfinder merged its business with the Alvarium Wealth group, a consoritum comprising UK private investment firm Alvarium (previously known as LJ Partnership) and NZ investors Ben Gough (through family office arm Tailorspace) and Brett Gamble.