Weekly Wrap: Happy investment news

In reflecting over the news this week could be described as a good news sort of time for the savings industry.

Friday, April 27th 2007, 4:51PM

On Monday we had the ASB investor confidence survey which showed people are positive about their investments, and managed funds were well perceived.

Today FundSource tells us that the March quarter was the best for funds flow in more than three years.

And for ING they get more good news - last night they won the INFINZ Fund Manager of the Year Award. This goes with the Morningstar gong they picked up recently.

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One of the things which has been fascinating to watch over the past couple of years is the effort fund managers and the like have put into trying to buy up distribution. [more]

While the investment side of the industry has some good news stories, the mortgage broking world is facing a major challenge with ANZ proposing to cut up front commissions. In a comment piece in the Mortgage Centre we suggest that other changes may be imminent too.

The broking industry is awash with email debate on the issue and how brokers should handle it. Options range from a union style strike or boycott of lenders who cut commissions through to more constructive ideas for how rem packages could be put together including the reintroduction of trails and lower upfronts, through to fees. To get a feel for the debate read this story and the comment piece.

Good Returns is also running a survey on the issue. If you would like to take part in it click here.

Sticking with mortgages we all know that the Reserve Bank hiked its OCR yesterday and this is going to further push up home loan rates with floating rates breaking into (or close too) the 10% barrier.

The good news is that people putting money on deposit should be seeing a pick up in rates offered.

You can check out the latest happenings at depositrates.co.nz

While on this topic it is worth highlighting a story from the KPMG banking survey this week which shows banks have held their place with term deposits in the face of increasing competition from online savings accounts and finance companies.

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Over in the insurance side of the industry we have our only regulation story of the week. This time it is a warning from AMP to advisers that they need to change their ways or face becoming "dinosaurs". As we know these beasts are now extinct.

During the week I chaired a KiwiSaver Masterclass conference in Auckland. We will have some coverage of this next week - suffice to say that one of the key observations is that we are 10 weeks from kickoff and people have a heck of a lot to do to get ready for this momentous event.

Amongst the people moves we have recorded this week are the appointment of a new investment analyst at Money Managers (we hear there is a new boss there too), a key appointment has been made at Vestar and the NZ Super Fund has a major new appointment. All the details can be found in the People Section of the site.