Friday 28th of January 2011

Perception and reality are two pretty confusing things sometimes. Last week we ran the story about NZ Funds partnering with the Institute of Financial Advisers to help provide professional development. My first take was excellent. It's good to see the IFA providing t his sort of service to its members and it  s great to see a firm, which has flown below  the radar for most of its life, come out and play a role in the industry. Well strike me down. I read the comments to the story about the deal over at NBR and talk about negative. Add to that ramblings from Chris Lee in his newsletter (it's here but you have to scroll down the page to find it) and also a note from some adviser over in Hawkes Bay and you end up with the perception that NZ Funds are an awful bunch. For the record we have always got on pretty well with the firm and found them pretty open. In the past the company made some products which you could say weren't award winners (well not the good awards anyway). It has also been criticised for the role it played with Doug Somers-Edgar and Money Managers. To its credit though it has worked through these issues and closed down MMG (Money Managers). The way I see it now is that the NZ Funds you have now is a different beast to the previous one. Product issues have been sorted, there has been a change of guard at the top, it is more openly engaged with the wider adviser market than previously and it is pretty innovative with some of its investment solutions. One would argue that the company is one of the most transparent fund managers in New Zealand It publishes, every month, a 110 page Portfolio Insights document on the web for clients and anyone else who is interested. Among other information it sets out virtually every asset it owns in every portfolio it manages. It also publishes and describes all of the associated companies in which it holds a financial interest. And for every client it provides the facility to receive individualised, since inception, performance reporting which includes every investment they have ever owned, both those that have done well and those that have not. In that regard its "value add" (or not) is also fully transparent. So yes there is a perception about the firm based on its past, but that is not reality today.