Wholesale alternative asset specialist, iPartners, has hit the NZ market proper with the launch of two portfolio investment entity (PIE) funds offering access to diversified private debt holdings.
Thom Bentley, who joined as iPartners first NZ-based employee last September, said two new funds have been seeded by staff with local high net worth investors, in particular, already queuing up.
Bentley said the brace of iPartners NZ products – the Diversified Private Income and Core Income PIEs – provide exposure to different levels of risk within the private debt sector.
The Core Income fund, targeting an annual yield of 6-8 per cent, holds primarily senior debt while the Diversified Private Income strategy boasts a higher allocation to more junior tranches in the capital stack.
Currently, the Core and Diversified funds feature respective running yields of about 9 per cent and 11 per cent in Australian dollar terms, he said. Bentley, previously the NZ face of Betashares, said iPartners intends to offer NZ-dollar hedged versions of the funds offer “in due course”.
Like the underlying Australian unit trusts, the NZ PIEs have both monthly liquidity and distribution pay-outs.
The next online monthly applications open on September 1.
In a statement, William Wong, iPartners funds management head, said the new products are “designed to provide NZ wholesale investors with simple diversified access to higher yielding private market investments”.
While the NZ-domiciled offer is limited at launch to the two PIEs, Bentley said Kiwi investors should ultimately see more of the iPartners product suite prepared for local consumption.
Founded in 2017 by Australian former investment bankers, Travis Miller and Rob Nankivell, iPartners has three core business lines: wholesale funds; originating deals; and, the investment platform that now administers more than A$5.5 billion of alternative assets – including on behalf of several large institutions through ‘white-label’ agreements.
Investors register online for the iPartners offer with fund documents, term-sheets, data and analytical tools, and placements all managed in a digital setting.
The firm built most of the NZ PIE structure in-house with Auckland-based specialist business, VCFO, providing some tax advisory services.
VCFO, which stands for ‘virtual chief financial officer’, was sold near the end of July to Asian corporate advisory aggregator, Acclime.
In a statement at the time, VCFO group director, Randolph van der Burgh, said: “Already, we are seeing benefits from our association with Acclime, with new referrals and service line support within our funds administration service and our new Employer of Record offering.”
The Auckland accounting and tax advice business launched in 2006, finding a niche structuring deals for foreign and local film productions in NZ along with broader advice and fund administration.