News Round Up: February 21

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Wealth management advice channel sales down 52%; ETITO updates Standard Set B pass figures;  KiwiSaver hits 1.63 mill; The ABCs of QFEs.  

Monday, February 21st 2011, 8:00AM 1 Comment

Wealth management advice channel sales down 52% at AXA
AXA reported wealth management sales through its owned advice channel were down 52% on 2009, citing a ‘challenging' advice market and the one-off impact of inflows from the Gould Wealth Management acquisition.

Sales through the non-aligned channel were down 11% on last year, impacted by lower mezzanine and superannuation flows

However, retail sales through the aligned channel increased by 10% thanks to higher KiwiSaver inflows.

ETITO updates Standard Set B pass figures
In the week ending February 14, 2113 advisers had sat and passed the Standard Set B examination and 135 had completed the Set C Assessment.

The figures were revealed in the latest update from ETITO, which also revealed 4354 candidates had registered with the training agency.

While 2113 advisers have passed the Standard Set B, a further 2920 have booked their places to sit the exam, and the pass rate is 76%.

KiwiSaver membership at 1.63m
Despite rising unemployment in December, an additional 20,000 people joined KiwiSaver in January and the scheme's total membership now stands at 1.63m people.

The figures have been revealed in the latest Tower Investments KiwiSaver trends analysis, which also found there are now over 440,000 in default schemes - raising questions about the Savings Working Group's recommendation for a single, government-run, monopoly default scheme.

"There has been some dispute over the merits of KiwiSaver default schemes since the Savings Working Group recently called for a nationalised monopoly default fund to be provided directly by the Government," said Tower CEO Sam Stubbs.

"Yet the IRD reported that by the end of January 2011, 440,333 people were assigned by the government to default schemes run by the six private sector default providers, including Tower."

"The current default system clearly isn't broken, which raises the question as to why it supposedly needs fixing," he said.

The ABCs for QFEs
The Securities Commission has released explanatory notes to assist QFEs in interpreting and complying with the Standard Conditions in practice in their financial adviser services.

The Commission said it took a principles-based approach to drafting the conditions, and that they are intended to, "assist QFEs in seeing the substance of the requirement."

The notes cover issues including reporting and notifications, records, disclosure and definitions.

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