The NZ retail funds sector topped up the kitty by almost $10 billion in the June quarter, according to new figures from consultancy firm Plan for Life (PFL), rounding off a remarkable recovery from the March 2020 lows.
“Retail Managed Funds increased 9.3% during the June quarter to NZ$116.1bn and were similarly up 9.1% over the whole of 2019/20,” the PFL June quarterly report says. “Two thirds of the growth was due to significant net fund flows with fairly modest investment earnings accounting for most of the rest.”
In total, NZ retail funds under management (FUM) breached $116 billion as at June 30 compared to just over $106 billion three months prior (a figure that was slightly lower than the March 2019 measure).
And for the first time in many moons, neither Milford Asset Management nor BNZ led the quarterly growth-rate statistics, leaving the Wellington-based Booster to claim the kudos.
Booster FUM was up 14.4 per cent over the June quarter, the PFL data shows, ahead of Fisher Funds and Milford, which both added about 13 per cent for the same period. However, Milford and Fisher each held almost four-times as much FUM as Booster, reporting respective results of $8.5 billion and $7.8 billion at June 30.
Milford continued to edge ahead of Fisher during the quarterly and 12-month periods after first drawing level with the Takapuna-based manager last June. In June 30, 2019, Milford and Fisher both held 6.4 per cent market share: by the same time this year, the respective PFL figures changed to 7.3 per cent and 6.8 per cent.
In fact, all the firms outside the top four (ANZ, ASB, BT/Westpac and AMP) – bar Mercer – managed to eke out market share gains over the year.
Continuing recent trends, the four largest players shed a per cent or two of market share over the quarter with Westpac/BT having the worst of it for the period, down 0.5 per cent. Over the 12 months to June 30, however, AMP slid the most with its market share down to 10.2 per cent compared to 11.1 per cent at the same time last year.
For the quarter, BNZ, Kiwi Wealth and the collective ‘other companies’ (those outside the top 10) all reported double-digit growth.
Over the 12-month period, the PFL study says: “Virtually all leading companies reported increases in funds under management with some of the highest percentage growth rates being recorded by BNZ (32.1%), Milford (24.4%), Booster (21.9%), Fisher (15.3%) and Kiwi Wealth (12.5%) but AMP was an exception declining by a marginal 0.3%.”
Despite their relative decline, the top three bank-owned retail fund groups all retain healthy FUM with market leader, ANZ, verging on $30 billion, ahead of second-placed ASB with $17 billion.
KiwiSaver, of course, accounted for most of the retail market expansion, growing 11.4 per cent in the June quarter and 15.5 per cent in 12 months to close the period just $1 billion shy of $70 billion. Non-superannuation retail funds grew just 1.7 per cent in the 12 months to June 30 (6.3 per cent for the quarter) but popped above the $40 billion market for the first time.
“Gross reported annual Inflows to June were NZ$37.0bn up by almost third, or 32.6% despite falling 12.3% during the latest quarter,” the PFL report says. “Year on year all companies posted very significant Inflow increases in particular Milford, BNZ, Mercer, Generate, Fisher, ANZ and AMP.”
The Melbourne-based PFL, headed by Rael Solomon, is part of the global proxy voting firm, Institutional Shareholder Services.