Weekly Wrap: Super Duper

A summary and some comments on the big news stories of the week.

Friday, March 16th 2007, 1:12PM
Yesterday and today I have been chairing the Super Summit in Wellington. Good Returns and ASSET will provide a number of reports on the conference over the next week or so. A couple of the key points to come out of it through is that there is a real buzz developing around KiwiSaver.

Today's lead story on Good Returns is useful in helping set the scene for and framework for super. In the story National Party finance spokesman Bill English made it clear that compulsory super is not a goer.

Presentations on asset allocation demonstrate that advisers have some real issues and learning going forward. Watch out for Tuesday's story on this.

Also it is interesting to see what the Retirement Commission is doing with getting into "advice".

Sticking with the savings theme SuperTalk has a piece on what the National party is thinking on savings and also Phil's Blog has the first of what I plan to be an occasional series discussing what it is like for an SME to deal with KiwiSaver implementation.

Meanwhile it's been a real people week. Thursday's story about the return of an old campaigner also shows how long I have been in the industry! Also we have news about a significant change at Westpac and a new senior appointment at AIA.

Another story which has grabbed headlines this week has been the latest Spicers Household Savings Indices which show, for the first time in six years that financial assets have grown faster than housing assets.

This information was used at the conference yesterday to illustrate that Kiwis are starting to develop a savings culture - it just needs nurturing.

Depositrates.co.nz

Likewise two of the larger finance companies, Strategic and Hanover have reported half-year results this week. Both look to have produced good numbers. Meanwhile some of the smaller finance companies have experienced ratings downgrades.

In Deposit Rates we will have a round up of new briefs soon.

Mortgage Centre continues to provide news on what's happening in the home loan market and with rates. The trend continues to be upward and cuts look further and further away.

We also have a story on a new Muslim home loan package.

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