[Weekly Wrap] The changing face of adviserland

This week's news has, to some degree, reflected the changes going on in adviserland at the moment.

Friday, July 10th 2009, 4:30PM

Today we report on ING ending its exclusive arrangement with David Greenslade's Strategi group. In some ways this wasn't unexpected as ING seems to be looking at a lot of the things it has done recently and made changes.

Another angle to it is that with the advent of regulation there is likely to be an increase in the number of firms which provide services to advisers.

We have, in depositrates.co.nz, another story about one of these firms, Grosvenor. In this piece we talk to Grosvenor about the future of its BondWatch service now the Reserve Bank has anointed the big three international ratings agencies as the only ones who can rate finance companies.

Another key adviser story is the changes at Spicers. It's downsized its adviser force by about a fifth and also ditched its finder/minder model.

If you would like to comment on any of these stories then you can do so using the comments box at the end of each story.

As many readers of ASSET will know Liontamer is back in the market with its first fund of the year, and it is a fund with a twist, having both protected and unprotected units. Another change, it has a research report from FundSource.

It's been a while since we have seen the research house do anything like this and it has a little twist itself. The former owners of the business were anti-capital protected products. Now, under NZX's ownership it is prepared to research these types of products.

As an aside, one story which hasn't had much press is that there are competing capital protected offers in or coming to the market. One is Rabobank's Intercap fund and we understand another bank is due to launch a capital-protected fund in September.

Also this week we report on changes to the PIE tax rules, and we have a further piece on the importance of financial literacy.

The big finance company news this week has been South Canterbury Finance's S&P rating change, they appear to be teetering on the edge of moving into junk bond status.

Also at depositrates.co.nz we report on finance company minnow and black sheep, Viaduct Capital, wanting its government guarantee back. The company was stripped of its guarantee earlier this year and has currently pulled its prospectus.

Another of the controversial finance companies in the news this week is Lombard. First up its auditors have questioned the value of its debentures. Secondly, the company now is looking to get into the insurance business through a reverse takeover of an Australian company.

Lombard has played in the insurance space before but that was one of the companies it sold off sometime before its finance company failed.

Our mortgage news has been very busy. In the Good Returns mortgage centre we have added a specific section for broker news. The first two stories are about gongs at Mortgage Link and a high-profile broker shifting to a new firm.

Across at our retail site, mortgagerates.co.nz we have started pulling together the views of all the experts. While this is focused on interest rates, it is also a great place to access all the regular economic reports.

Finally, if you know of any new appointments in the industry, please let us know so we can add them to the People section.

Have a great weekend.
Philip

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