Liontamer: Protecting your client’s investments

When it comes to capital protected investments, advisers, brokers and sub wholesale investors are all currently singing from the same tune sheet – ‘we like innovation’ and ‘bring us more ideas’ are the two major symphonies at the moment.

That positive reaction has been good news for Liontamer, New Zealand’s first specialist provider of capital protected funds. Seven new funds have been launched in the last year and a number are on the drawing board for 2004.

When it comes to innovation, it’s useful to watch the market offshore, but the main aim is to take the best ideas and add a NZ twist. Internationally, new ideas are quickly copied and improved upon. In countries such as Belgium (one of the largest markets in Europe) innovation has been around interest rate based investments or ‘floaters’ as they are termed. In the UK, the latest issues give gains when the market rises or falls – ‘bull/bear’ products. Asian products based around groups of individual stocks are all the rage. In New Zealand, we’re certainly not falling behind in the innovation stakes. Liontamer have issued accelerated growth products, wrapped protection around commodities and are now working on a new income fund to launch near the end of April.