Weekly Wrap: No retirement yet

The Weekly Wrap sums up all the important news stories in the financial services industry.

Friday, February 6th 2009, 10:13AM

There's a bit more bad news for advisers from ING today it seems. A report from the company on retirement issues says there is no retirement for old men and women. Considering the advisory industry's average age, I guess we've all got many more years work ahead of us!

I'm not sure if the survey takes into account performance of investments and whether that has any impact on retirement plans either.

Earlier this year I noted that there will be plenty of activity in the area of adviser groups. This week we report that the Newpark/PIS deal has changed significantly. Something is going ahead but it's between PIS Australia and Newpark, not the company's New Zealand operation. You can read all about that here.

Also, rumour has it there are discussions happening between a big fund manager and insurer and one of the other advisory groups. We expect to hear some news on these talks soon.

With all the changes happening in the market I reckon there could be big changes in the advisory industry space too. These are outlined in today's Blog.

Time for the association mega-merger?
All this talk about changes in companies, structures and staffing got me thinking about what could happen in the advisory industry. [more]

This week's funds flow figures from FundSource are also a useful check of the industry's pulse. KiwiSaver remains the brightest spot with funds flowing here. Also it is useful to see who made forward progress in the December quarter. The five managers with positive growth are named in the story. Also I suspect it will come as no surprise that cash and fixed interest have been the most popular asset classes.

That looks to continue with a rush of corporate bond offerings being announced or released this week, including Fonterra, Meridian, TOWER, NZ Post and others. Added together corporate are seeking to raise more than $1 billion. We have more information on the offers in www.depositrates.co.nz.

If you want to see an excellent snapshot of what is happening in markets around the world click here. This is the latest data which was published this morning. It's an excellent summary of what is happening at the moment.

The other big story at www.depositrates.co.nz is the sad and sorry state of Capital + Merchant Finance. What an awful mess this has turned out to be. The other mess is the Nathans Finance story which has attracted some media attention and at least one life member of the IFA has been prominent in the media.

On a more positive note is our Insurance News coverage. We have news on AIG Life's new adviser remuneration package, Russell Hutchinson's latest column and in our Mortgage News section a piece about Kiwibank now selling its loans through a broker network.

And to round this short week off we have the appointment of a new director of Financial Planning at Massey University. Details are in the People section. If you have a new appointment or are looking to hire then send details to info@goodreturns.co.nz

Have a great weekend.