So John Key and Bill English are the new leaders of the opposition National Party.

While the media are having a little love fest over this latest coup (phrases like ‘dream team’, dynamic duo’) it will be interesting to see the substance of the new leaders.

We know Key is good on finance, but how about all the other things which are necessary to run a country? I’ve no idea what he stands for and I bet I’m not the only voter in this camp.

But moving on, my focus is on what does it mean for our industry? As we know Key is well-grounded in this area and English has previously been a finance minister.

I suspect we will see the Nats more engaged in superannuation and related issues. One of the ironies of the Brash era was that we never really knew what he stood for in superannuation. And he rarely fronted at industry events. The vague impression was that deep down he would have liked compulsory superannuation and to reduce the state pension, NZ Super, including raising the age of entitlement.

However, we never really knew – partly I suspect as his views would not have won the party a lot of voter support.

What has been impressive about Key is that he has come into this area with a seemingly open mind, has listened and learned and has tempered his own views as he has learnt more about the issues. While Brash was near invisible in an area you would expect him to have a high profile in, Key was highly visible fronting at many conferences and presentations.

In superannuation he has moved gradually from believing New Zealand doesn’t have a savings problem through to acknowledging there may be an issue here.

I suspect he was also one who had moderated National’s views on both the NZ Superannuation Fund (aka the Cullen Fund) and KiwiSaver.

This demonstrates a degree of pragmatism.

One immediate change is that as leader of the opposition Key will most likely relinquish his place on the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee which is hearing the taxation bill.

I presume English will take his place.

The importance of this is that Key appears to have been quite influential on the committee’s thinking and direction.

The other aspect, and one which has been fascinating to observe, is that Key and Labour MP Shane Jones (who chairs the committee) appear to work very well and constructively together. Although they are from opposing political camps they appear to have put their differences aside and worked together.

Will English bring the same knowledge and attitude to the table? Time will tell.

What can we expect from the new leaders? Maybe they will become champions of compulsory super – after all the public seem to like the idea. Maybe Key will look to level the playing field between residential property investment and other investments such as shares and managed funds.

I’m interested in hearing other people’s thoughts about what they would like to see Key do in the financial services/savings space.

Email your thoughts to blog@goodreturns.co.nz

I suspect most financial planners would be pretty happy to have a client with more than $3.4 million and pulling in $50K plus every fortnight.

Well, that is unless it was Wayne Patterson (47) who recently admitted multiple fraud and forgery charges making him one of the largest benefit swindlers in the country.

Like many readers I had been following the story of Patterson – partly because it was so unbelievable.

The biggest chuckle though was when I heard an item on the television news about Patterson and said to myself I know that voice.

Turns out the landlord of the fraudster’s home was Auckland financial planner Paul Markham.

I guess if Markham had been giving Patterson financial advice instead of just collecting a couple of hundred bucks a week in rent, he would have advised to do some other things with the money besides stashing hundreds of thousands of thousands of dollars around the house and garden.

As for the 12 gold bars, well they may be a good investment according to some planners I have heard from recently.

In the end it’s nice to know that not all financial planners are anti investment properties (not sure if they get recommended to clients though) and that Markham may have lost his tenant, but at least his ordinary house is now a “mansion” with an expensive and exotic garden!

It’s good to see Standard and Poor’s make the positive decision to enter the market for rating finance companies and the like in New Zealand.

Regular Blog readers will know some of my views on various “offers” in the market – frankly some of them are rubbish.

The advent of S&P makes you think about what a good rating service should do.

The Reserve Bank alludes to some issues which are a good benchmark for ratings. In its Financial Stability Report it suggests that a rating needs to have the following attributes:

• Be formulated using a well defined process and transparent analytical criteria;
• besubject to regular monitoring of performance to ensure that they accurately reflect credit risks;
• be clearly explained to investors; and
• be comparable across and within sectors, both domestically and globally.

Of all the offers in the market I would suggest S&P is the only one which gets close to this.

Where it falls down is on the fourth point, that it should be comparable “across and within sectors.”
S&P is proposing a new scale which has a different set of “codes” to the traditional A, B, C etc model.

A number of institutions have raised this as an issue. For instance how do you compare a finance company with a NZ1 rating versus a listed debt security with a BB rating?

At this stage the answer is not clear. Hopefully S&P will provide some more insight into this question soon.

Two other points worth making are these:
If you are looking at ratings, think about how they fit with the four criteria outlined above.

Also read the Ministry of Economic Development’s discussion paper on issues facing the deposit taking sector. Give them your view on the issue of ratings.

If you don’t want to give your money to fund managers to invest you can give it to them to support good causes.

Movember isn’t just the ING thing, others are in the game too.

AMP Capital Investors are also featuring in the grow-off, so it’s like game on. Which of these managers can out do the other?

In the AMP team is: Andrew Johnson, Anthony Beverley, Anthony Edmonds, Anton Jones, Bradd Topp, Brent Buchanan, Chris Vogtherr, Connor Collier, Dan Russick, David Blyth, Grant Hassell, Hamish McCulloch, Jarrod Thompson, Jonathan Falloon, JP Schmidt, Lawrence Nair, Lawrence Young, Leo Krippner, Marcus Jacobson, Michael Sweetman, Nigel Croke, Paul Broughton, Paul Phillips, Shaun Reed, Stan Wilson, Stephen Costley, Stephen Ladanyi, Steve Corbett, Warren Potter and Warrick Jackson.
But that’s not all, the name of their PR-chick, Sue Ryan, also features in the list supplied! Now before you jump to conclusions it’s worth having a look at this article which shows how women can take part in Movember.

Sticking with corporate goodwill and something which is close to my butt at the moment, is St Laurence’s sponsorship of the Onslow Tar Babies cycle team.

I’m interested as this year, after years of threatening, I plan to compete in the 160km round Taupo bike ride (paid my entry anyway). Form in my two most recent outings, last weekend’s 84km Bike the Lake (round Lake Rotorua twice) and the Hamilton- Auckland 100km flyer have been average. (I did get a flatty 10ks into last weekend’s race which didn’t help). Must be saving the big performance!

Anyway back to St Laurence – they are supporting the Tarbabies who are fundraising for round the Taupo Cycle Challenge for the Child Cancer Foundation check out this site http://www.onslowtarbabies.org.nz/otbwell.html

Since Paul Fyfe left ING there has been a chronic lack of a decent mo at ING. Well, that won’t be the case by the end of this month (we hope).

A bunch of the boys at ING have jumped into a competition to see who can grow the biggest mo in a month.

They are getting in behind a good cause, supporting prostrate cancer awareness amongst men.

In our public service role we will be keeping you up to date with growth of these mos (maybe we could have a index like one of their funds? – Ed).

Wayne “Boris” Becker, David Boyle and Aaron Klee are featuring in the great mo-grow off. You can sponsor any (or all) of them by going to http://www.movember.com.au/nz/sponsor. Enter the appropriate registration number (Boris 10692, Boyle 10706, Klee 10718) and (yes) follow the instructions.

As you can see both Becker and Boyle are off to a clean start. (We couldn’t determine with Klee).

Funds raised in New Zealand will be donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of New Zealand.

About the cause
Part of the answer is a lack of awareness about the very real health issues faced by males. The good old “she’ll be right” attitude and a reluctance to see a doctor about an illness or for regular medical checks also contributes to the problem.

The aim of Movember is to change this attitude, make male health fun by putting the mo back on the face of fashion and in the process raise some serious funds for key male health issues.

Did you know?

1. Men are far less healthy than women. The average life expectancy of males is six years less than females.
2. Every year in New Zealand about 600 men die of prostate cancer – about the same as the number of women who die from breast cancer

Benchmark
And if the Mo Bros need a benchmark for their project, here it is: