NZ Funds Media Release 25 February 2019 Auckland, New Zealand – NZ Funds today announced that it was the top rated KiwiSaver Scheme in New Zealand for service with a score of 99% as ranked by Sorted. Sorted is a website run by the Commission for Financial Capability and surveys KiwiSaver providers regularly to rank their commitment to service. “NZ Funds believes service will be an important ingredient over the long term in determining the New Zealanders who will meet their retirement objectives and those who will not, so we have set an internal objective to deliver a level of service which ‘wows’ both clients and advisers. Being the top ranked scheme in New Zealand for service is a consequence of that philosophy” say Geoff Motion, Principal & Head of Service at NZ Funds. “Most clients don’t realise what they are missing out on until they experience it. Many New Zealanders have not had their asset allocation optimised for their age and stage or had help determining wh...

Since the release of the Tax Working Group’s report last month the media has been rife with speculation on what the implications of a capital gains tax (CGT) might be. I am always reticent to comment on any proposal before we know what will actually be included in the final legislation that will come before Parliament. And, in a comment that I never thought I would make, it will be interesting to see what moderating effect Winston (NZ First) might have on the final wording of the proposed legislation. The key proposal put forward by the working group was the introduction of a comprehensive tax that would be applied to capital gains. Rather than a unique tax rate being applied just to capital gains, the recommendations propose that any gains on capital (generally at the time of asset realisation) will be returned as part of your income and taxed at your marginal tax rate. This will result in many capital gains being taxed at 33%. Although the proposal includes some exemption...

The last quarter of 2018 was negative for shares – particularly overseas markets. Occasional volatility is normal but as usual there were voices suggesting the end of the world had arrived and media reported that investors were ‘draining’ money from share funds in the US, with $46 billion being withdrawn in one week in early December. Were those withdrawals a reaction to falling markets? I suspect many were. And I wonder how much of that money was reinvested for the recovery in January. A relatively small portion I suspect. It is important to acknowledge that most of us suffer some level of frustration or concern during negative periods and that this is normal. Successful investment however is the ability to ride out those periods. If our reaction is to want to sell perfectly good investments simply because markets are down then we need to consider whether we should reduce the size of our share investments, which tend to be more volatile. The offset of course being that we als...

Entering our fourth decade, it is interesting to reflect on how our management of New Zealanders’ savings, invested alongside our own, has gone over the last three decades.  With the caveat that our early track record is more product-orientated, and that the mandate we discuss is growth-orientated, but nevertheless well diversified, we have accumulated the following 26 year investment record.  It is also worth noting that our long-term performance is not a paper tiger, but the management of significant sums on behalf of thousands of New Zealand individuals, trusts and institutions... Please read the full report below.