BNP Paribas has talked up New Zealand as an international investment destination in the latest issue of its ‘Quintessence’ magazine.
The globally-distributed publication extols the virtues of the NZ investment scene, citing strong governance, recent regulatory upgrades, solid debt ratings, and burgeoning capital markets (spurred on by KiwiSaver) as selling points.
According to the report, New Zealand had racked up about US$112.5 billion (about NZ$175 billion) of investment funds across institutional and retail markets as at September last year.
The BNP article says global investors have also shown an increased appetite for NZ financial assets.
“New figures [show] a large influx of foreign capital into New Zealand shares supplementing the strong inflows from KiwiSaver schemes,” the report says.
BNP says New Zealand’s financial market was on-trend with global developments such as the recent move to ‘T+2’ settlement standards for the NZX.
The growing NZ funds industry also has potential to expand offshore with BNP reporting on mooted regional cross-border investment product-marketing agreements looming.
“Expected in 2017, the Asia Region Funds Passport (ARFP) is a region-wide initiative being led by Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Japan and Thailand,” the BNP article says. “It will provide a multilateral framework to facilitate the cross border marketing of managed funds across participating economies.”
The January Quintessence report follows on the back of a December 2015 article penned by BNP NZ chief, Doug Cameron.
Cameron cites the burgeoning broad-based growth of foreign investment in NZ as a positive sign for the country’s funds management business.
“The country is hoping to spread this good news story to the wider asset management sphere,” he says. “There have been positive developments in New Zealand with a new regulatory regime; it is hoped this will enable more connections to the regional and global financial network.”