Welcome to Fisher Funds

With the move to daily pricing (each business day) of your investments, from early April you’ll be able to see more up to date investment balances. You’ll also be able to generate reports directly from your new client portal as you please.

As a result, with your increased access to more timely investment performance insights, we’ll be moving monthly investment commentary to quarterly.

The quarterly investment commentary will be provided on the portal, as will the 30 June 2024 annual report.

To provide more regular updates to your balance and enable your transactions to be processed more frequently, your investments will be priced each business day. At present, your investments are priced weekly.

Your portfolio will be invested in the Fisher Funds Wholesale Funds that are priced each business day. With investments priced each business day, transactions are usually processed on the next business day after we receive instructions.

In your new client portal, you’ll see your balance updated each business day. The price shown will usually be two business days behind, as we need to wait for markets around the world to close first, and then complete our process to calculate the unit prices for the investments in your portfolio. For example, when you view your balance on a Monday, it will be based upon the latest available unit prices, which could be the prior Thursday.

To allow us to price your investment daily (business days only) and provide more regular reporting, we’re removing a layer in the way your investments are made.

Currently, the PPS investment strategies are invested in the Fisher Funds Wholesale Funds via the Kiwi Wealth Growth Fund and the Kiwi Wealth Fixed Interest Fund. We will remove the extra layer and the PPS investment strategies will invest directly in the Fisher Funds Wholesale Funds. You will see this change on your holdings reports after this transition. The asset classes and underlying securities you are currently invested in remain the same.

The way we calculate your fees is changing (for the better).

We’re simplifying the fee structure on the Growth Strategy to better reflect your investment holding in that Strategy. The fee that will apply will be based on the portion of your portfolio that targets the Growth strategy and not your total portfolio value.

This is outlined in the table below. You can always see what fees you pay in your new client portal.

Your fees will now be calculated on the daily value of your investment in the Growth Strategy and / or Fixed Interest Strategy as opposed to the month-end balance as is currently used. We’re doing this to make the fees you pay more reflective of your investment mix.

The management fee will accrue daily and will be deducted from your portfolio monthly. We will pay NZXWT from this management fee.

Currently, expenses of underlying investment funds can be passed through the unit prices of those underlying funds. As we're moving to invest the strategies into the Fisher Funds Wholesale Funds directly, we’re outlining the types of expenses that will be passed through the funds. These are expenses that relate to services such as accounting, custody, unit pricing, and audit, and trustee fees that will be incurred within these funds. Expenses will be reflected in the returns of the Fisher Funds Wholesale Funds, and ultimately your return.

We are changing the way we calculate your portfolio’s performance to include your activity (your contributions and withdrawals). This provides a more accurate reflection of your investment's performance and brings it more in line with the industry standard.

To achieve this, we are moving from a Time Weighted methodology to a Capital Weighted methodology.

The Capital Weighted methodology provides a more accurate reflection of your personal investment performance. It looks at several factors, including your investment mandate (the percentage you invest in each of our strategies), your investment activities (including the impact of the contributions and withdrawals you make), and the tax and the fees you pay.

In addition, you won’t see an individual benchmark return for your portfolio, you'll only see the benchmark return of each of the strategies and their return.

As part of the transition to Fisher Funds, we’re changing the provider of your service from Kiwi Wealth Investments Limited Partnership (“KWILP”) to Fisher Funds Management Limited (“Fisher Funds”). Kiwi Wealth Investments Limited Partnership (“KWILP”) transferred the service to Fisher Funds as allowed in your PPS Client Agreement.

We’ll be simplifying the number of tax reports you get and the number of times we pay tax on your Portfolio Investment Entity (PIE) taxable income from 1 April 2024.

At present, you receive three individual reports - an Annual Investor Tax Statement for each of the Kiwi Wealth Growth Fund and the Kiwi Wealth Fixed Interest Fund along with an Annual Tax Report for the year ended 31 March 2024. This will be the case up until 31 March 2024 and your Annual Tax Report will also include information relating to the Fisher Funds Wholesale Funds.

From 1 April 2024 we will combine these into a single Annual Tax Report and this is how you will receive them going forward.

Additionally, we are moving from a quarterly PIE to an annual PIE. This means we’re only paying tax on your taxable income from PIEs once a year or when you make a withdrawal rather than four times.

From mid-March 2024 we are moving to an independent external custodian - NZX Wealth Technologies Limited (NZXWT). This brings the Private Portfolio Service more in line with other providers. Here are a few things to note:

1. You’ll still receive look-through reporting in your new client portal.
2. You’ll now receive your six-monthly custody reports from NZXWT.
3. As we move to the new custodian, there will be a change to the bank account you currently pay your deposits to. See above for details of the new bank account and payment instruction details.

We’ll be changing the disputes resolution provider from Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman to Financial Services Complaints Limited.

You will notice that your interest payment will be paid from Fisher Funds from March.

All of the above changes have been captured in a new client agreement dated 15 March 2024 and which will take effect on the same day NZXWT becomes the custodian. You can download the agreement here and we recommend you save a copy for your own records. A summary of the changes is as follows:

1. It is now split into three sections for greater clarity:
• Private Portfolio Service
  
• Individual Portfolio Service
  
• General Terms & Conditions
  
2. We are moving to a new independent custodian called NZX Wealth Technologies Limited (NZXWT). In the agreement you will see some new disclosures relating to NZXWT and how it uses its trust account.
   
3. A change to Fisher Funds Management Limited as the provider of the two services covered by the agreement as opposed to Kiwi Wealth Investments Limited Partnerships.
   
4. An update to your processing times to reflect the move from weekly to daily pricing.
   
5. We’ll be rebalancing your portfolio at least once per quarter to ensure it remains in line with the investment mandate you have agreed with us.
   
6. We’re introducing a new cash management account as part of your account with the custodian (NZXWT) and all transactions and fees will be processed through this account.
   
7. We’ve renamed ‘limited persons’ to ‘reporting persons’. Their access will remain as current and they will receive their own log-in to your new client portal.
   
8. We now only accept New Zealand Dollars and have removed reference around being able to accept foreign currency into your PPS.
   
9. Should you wish to close your PPS account, your balance will be paid in cash to your nominated bank account. You will not be able to transfer your balance or holdings to another custodian or to be held in your name.
   
10. For certain instructions, things like withdrawals or investment mandate instructions, you’ll need to email us or contact your adviser directly, as we will no longer receive these instructions via post.