Spread Your Investment Risk (Diversification)
Or – don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
To get your money working for you, you need to have different investments, asset types and different investment providers. Your KiwiSaver fund will be diversified in the ways that we have outlined below. (unless you are in a particular asset class like International Equities).
Three main asset classes: (link to more information on each of these)
- Fixed Interest/Cash
- Equities
- Property
Each of these asset classes will perform differently in different markets, so it is important to have an exposure to each type. How much of each one you will have in your investment strategy will depend on your risk profile.
‘Fixed Interest/Cash’ includes term deposits, but also includes listed bonds, government stock, bank bills and other types of fixed interest.
‘Equities’ is just a flash word for shares.
‘Property’ is not just your home (which we don’t include as an investment as you have to have somewhere to live), or other residential investment properties, but also includes investments in office blocks, retail (shops), wholesale (warehouses). Making sure that you can access your money when you want, we use managed funds and listed property investments, so that you know that you can move your money easily and get access to it when you need it.
Diversify between New Zealand and Overseas companies. The Gross Domestic Product of New Zealand is worth only 0.14% of the total world GDP. Our financial markets are similarly just as tiny. By limiting your investments to only New Zealand, you are limiting your returns from companies that are truly global (and that you might use in your day to day life like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Nike) and have more growth potential.
Use different fund managers. A fund manager is someone like Milford, or ANZ, or Magellan. These might be names that you have heard of. There are many fund managers (or investment managers) available for you to invest in, but very few offer ‘retail’ investments in New Zealand. The best way to invest with these outstanding fund managers is through a WRAP (Wealth Retirement Accumulation Platform) through a financial planner.
Fund managers life and breathe their investment research and investment decisions. They visit companies to find out what is happening, they often know about things that have happened before the media finds out – if they are good at doing their research.
Each fund manager tends to have a niche that they are specialists in. For example, Mint Asset Management is a consistently good manager of Real Estate Investments (Commercial, Industrial, Retail) and Hyperion of Global shares. Therefore, the skill is in understanding what the fund managers are doing, how they work, what systems, processes, checks and balances they have in place.
Peter (Investment Research Manager) and Paul (Investment Research Associate), spend many hours visiting our existing and potential fund managers, participating in webinars, reading research and documentation (as well as the rest of the research that our team does), to work out which are the most suitable fund managers to recommend to our clients. Our fund managers are monitored consistently so that we are quickly alerted to any glitches or changes.
Moneyworks NZ Ltd
P: 0800 225 621
E: contact@moneyworks.co.nz
P O Box 1003, Cambridge 3450
Licensed Financial Advice Provider - FSP 15281
Regulatory Information: Moneyworks is a Licensed Financial Advice Provider (FSP15281), and AML Reporting Entity and is supervised by the Financial Markets Authority.