Kiwi Wealth head of operations, Robert Taylor, ends his almost 15-year career at the now government-owned organisation to take up a job with the group’s founding figure.
Taylor, who finishes a transition period at Kiwi Wealth this week after officially leaving his role at the end of August, has been appointed head of investments for the Gareth Morgan family office.
He joined the Kiwi Wealth predecessor firm, Gareth Morgan Investments (GMI), in 2004 – remaining with the business after it was sold to Kiwibank for $50 million in 2012. GMI managed about $1.5 billion at the time of the Kiwibank purchase including $650 million in its KiwiSaver scheme.
Kiwi Wealth, now legally separate from Kiwibank (albeit with shared parents), currently boasts more than $5 billion under management including almost $3.9 billion of KiwiSaver money.
In July Kiwi Wealth hired BNP Paribas to rationalise the group’s multiple back-office systems, some of which date back to the early GMI days.
Morgan famously eschewed unit-pricing in favour of a bespoke home-built administration system that remains largely in place – albeit that asset pricing for the KiwiSaver and other legacy schemes has moved from monthly to weekly pricing.
Kiwi Wealth delegates custody to JB Were for KiwiSaver scheme but acts as its own custodian in some other products. The recently-launched Kiwi Wealth retail product range uses Public Trust as custodian and MMC for unit pricing and registry.
Public Trust is supervisor for all Kiwi Wealth funds.
According to the Kiwi Wealth website, Taylor was “heavily involved in the growth of the business, which has seen it go from 8 staff to over 80 [since 2004”.
He was “responsible for client and fund valuations, tax, executing the investment strategy at the client level, processing and settling trades, reconciling it all and reporting back to clients and members”, Kiwi Wealth says.
It is understood Taylor would not be replaced with his duties to be redistributed among senior managers.
The Kiwi Wealth move follows a number of senior investment operational role changes in recent months. For example, earlier in September the NZ Superannuation Fund promoted Amy Hitchcock to head of investments operations while Devon Funds Management hired Michelle Fotiades in a new role as operations manager.