KiwiSaver

There are calls for the Government to give KiwiSaver providers a set deadline to divest from companies involved in the manufacture of cluster bombs, landmines and nuclear weapons.

Four default providers – ANZ, Westpac, Kiwibank and Mercer – still have exposure to the industry despite a furore last year that drew public attention and condemnation to the investments.

Jacqui Dean, Minister for Commerce and Consumer Affairs, has said she expects KiwiSaver providers to drop their investments but has not said when.

The Green Party said that was not good enough.

“The National Government’s weak approach is letting too many KiwiSaver providers off the hook for behaviour that is unethical and possibly illegal.

“Parliament’s intention was clear when it passed a law banning investment in companies producing cluster bombs in 2009.”

Westpac has announced BTNZ, manager of the Westpac KiwiSaver Scheme, was already working to exclude exposure to munitions and tobacco across all KiwiSaver funds. The process is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

A spokeswoman for ANZ said its investment exposure was small.

“We completed full divestment of any direct investments by our funds in controversial weapons and tobacco in September last year,” she said.

“None of ANZ’s KiwiSaver funds invest directly in these types of companies.  We will be confirming details in the next few weeks of a new investment solution which will ensure there is also no indirect investment in these kinds of companies for members of our ANZ Default KiwiSaver Conservative Fund – none of the other funds have any indirect investments in these companies.”

She said the default fund still had some passive holdings because it invested in international equities via a passive index tracking fund.

“These holdings will shortly be transitioned to a fund managed by us to ensure that we have the flexibility to make further changes that our investors might want.   It’s been important to take the time to develop a future-proofed solution as we recognise that investor views on ethical investing will continually evolve and we want to ensure that we can continue to deliver the best possible investment performance for our members as changes are made.”

Sam Stubbs, head of new low-cost KiwiSaver provider Simplicity, said the funds should be suspended until they can exit their investment in banned weapons’ makers.

He said they had had enough time to make the change.

Simplicity uses the new Vanguard clean screen offer – a new global equities index fund that does not have exposure to cluster munitions, nuclear weapons-associated firms or tobacco.

BNZ today announced it would drop investments in companies involved in the production of cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines, nuclear weapons and tobacco or tobacco products.

BNZ has announced it will drop its investments in companies involved in the production of cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines, nuclear weapons and tobacco or tobacco products.

Its new responsible investment policy was announced on Thursday.

“In the last three-and-a-half years our funds under management have grown from $1.5 billion to almost $4 billion today, so we’ve undertaken a comprehensive review of our investment business,” BNZ head of wealth and private bank Donna Nicolof said.

In the past BNZ invested in commingled funds alongside other institutional investors.

“Our growth gives us the ability to leverage the scale across our wealth business to establish discrete mandates with investment managers, which gives us greater control of where and how our customers’ money is invested. This is a journey for us,” she said.

“We have been developing our approach to responsible investing over the past six months to ensure we have a robust framework where investment decisions align with both our investment beliefs and the changing attitudes of our investors and society.

“One of our key investment beliefs is that risk and return are equally important and we have made the decision to exclude companies involved in the manufacture of tobacco on the basis that there is no safe level of use and engagement with these companies is futile. The regulatory and litigation risks faced by this industry are significant.”

Nicolof said investment markets in New Zealand were maturing and ESG factors were becoming more important.

The policy affects all investments BNZ makes on behalf of customers, including in its KiwiSaver schemes.

There are calls to streamline the process of transfers between KiwiSaver schemes, to reduce the burden on providers and members.

KiwiSaver transfers are in the Financial Markets Authority’s sights. It has  requested information from all providers about transfers in the last quarter of last year, broken down to the number of days a transfer took to process.

Binu Paul, founder of SavvyKiwi, said there were problems with the current situation.

“There is too much lag between when an investment decision to move is made, and when their account balances actually get transferred, with some taking more than a month,” he said.

“That is assuming the process goes smoothly. I have seen instances where some users on SavvyKiwi have made a decision to move and even received the sign-up pack from the new provider, and they have simply sat on it for up to three months or more, til we have sent them a follow-up email.

“The issue here is about friction. When it comes to client on-boarding, we still have too many manual steps to go through to make things happen. For example, having to manually walk into a storefront with a copy of your ID and utility bill for identity and address verification. If you want people to take action, you have to take away as much friction as possible.”

He said providers also had to go through a lot of time-intensive activities that were ultimately redundant.

Many of the ID requirements were a result of anti-money laundering rules, he said.

“Having said that, you have to remember that KiwiSaver is like the reverse of a ‘gated-community’. Members are welcome to come in but once you are in, you are locked in till a certain time. There is not much mischief you can get up to during that time in terms of money-laundering.”

He said that should make it possible to make changes. “Once you are in a KiwiSaver scheme, after having gone through a check, when transferring to another scheme, do you need to go through the same checks again?  Can we use a Government-maintained central database of individuals that is a single source of truth when it comes to personal IDs and use that as a base for the transfer process?”

He said some of the checks seemed better suited to be deployed when people wanted money out, rather than when they transferred.

Ana-Marie Lockyer, general manager of wealth products and marketing at ANZ, the country’s biggest KiwiSaver provider, said all KiwiSaver providers reported against the requirement that member switches happened within 35 days, or 10 days for members of default schemes.

“We comply with this, assuming we have all the necessary information. We would support any moves to have the same timeframe for transfers whether someone is a member of a default or other KiwiSaver scheme.”

READ MORE: FMA: No hard lines on KiwiSaver incentives

KiwiSaver providers can offer incentives to entice customers to their schemes, so long as they do not distract the customer from making good decisions about KiwiSaver.

That’s the ruling in the Financial Markets Authority’s latest guidance note.

It replaces a 2012 document that had the unintended consequence of reducing the amount of advice being given on the retirement savings scheme.

The FMA’s previous focus on personalised advice only being offered by those eligible by law to give it scared some providers off advice completely.

Liam Mason, the FMA’s director of regulation, said, “We have revised and updated our guidance to clarify how the different categories of advice can be applied to ensure customers are getting the help they need. We recognise advisers and providers should be confident they are acting within the rules.”

The FMA is also issuing a consumer guide, telling people to think about whether they were being pressured and what their options were before they moved to a new scheme.

Mason said the FMA would look at the incentives offered by providers, although it would not draw hard lines. Of interest would be the size of the incentive and how they were sold.

The FMA said that incentives could achieve good outcomes when they encouraged them to get the best out of KiwiSaver.

“We may be concerned where there is a combination of a high-value incentive and an effort to influence a customer to make a significant decision,” the FMA said.

“Our concern would centre on whether the value of the incentive was such that the customer was focused on that.”

It was something that submitters were concerned about.

Glynns Financial Services wrote in its submission: “I have had one mortgage client told that she has to implement new life insurance, income protection and transfer her KiwiSaver in order to get a discounted interest rate and cashback.”

Mason said the main goal of the guidance was to help New Zealanders get the information they needed to make good decisions about KiwiSaver.

The guide makes clear the limits of what can be provided within class advice boundaries.

It says that customers can be told to be in KiwiSaver, to choose a contribution rate that is enough to get the member tax credit, to choose the right type of fund and the correct tax rate.

“A rule of thumb is that you have moved from class to personalised advice when you cannot answer a customer’s question without knowing about their personal financial situation or goals.”

In their submissions, ANZ and BNZ both asked for the guidance to be held back until after the financial advice legislation is updated.

The bill currently out for consultation would remove the class and personalised advice designations completely.

Both said, if the guidance note was issued before those changes were enacted, there could be confusion or “change fatigue” for front-line staff.

The FMA acknowledged that the law changes would effect the guidance, which would have to be reviewed. “In the meantime, this guidance recognises there is an opportunity to remove an identified barrier to New Zealanders getting the help they need to make good decisions about KiwiSaver.”

Mason said the new bill would put more responsibility on the individual adviser to make sure the type of advice they were offering was right for the customer.  It would be a more nuanced approach than the class versus advice delineation.