Heathcote Investment Partners director Clayton Coplestone, who promotes a number of international funds, says New Zealand was once considered an “oddity” but managers around the globe were now looking to establish a presence here.

Coplestone was recently contacted by an Australian financial journalist asking about a surge in interest by Aussie managers in the small country across the Tasman.

But he says it’s not just Australians looking to promote their financial products to Kiwis.

Heathcote recently signed with Connecticut-based manager Altrinsic, which has US$16b under management, and says there’s interest coming from America and Europe.

“We’re now talking to some massive European entities.  There are three out of Europe who are very keen to start their activities here in New Zealand.  These groups have hundreds of billions of dollars of funds under management.

“We’re also talking to another group out of the Unites States.  There’s some big Northern Hemisphere entities saying ‘maybe I should look at how I do business in New Zealand’.

“New Zealand has always been an oddity and managers who came down under would usually stop at Melbourne or Sydney.” 

A number of different factors have combined to put New Zealand on the radar, he says.

“If you take any jurisdiction around the world, the introduction of compulsory or incentivised savings underwrites the advice industry and the capital markets.  New Zealand is on the map now with KiwiSaver.”
Regulation has also improved New Zealand’s attractiveness, he says.

“Groups I’m talking to are saying, ‘tell me more about the regulator’.  The FMA has been in New Zealand three or four years and people are hearing it’s not dissimilar to ASIC.  It gives people comfort about doing business in New Zealand.”

Coplestone says another factor is what he describes as a “gross undersupply” of quality managers available locally to New Zealand investors.

“We have some domestic talent but not a lot.  There’s now an opportunity for New Zealand investors to get access to capabilities that simply don’t exist here.”