Weekly wrap: Pioneer farwelled

You can take your pick of what was the most important story this week. The odds are that it had something to do with regulation (as we seem to have an abundance of reg stories at the moment). However, a couple of others struck me as important.

Friday, May 7th 2010, 4:07PM

One, which was the most commented on, was the passing away of one of the life insurance industry's true figures and pioneers - Gordon Watson. Gordon was the founder of Fidelity Life and was someone who had a big influence on many insurance advisers in New Zealand.

Amongst the raft of regulation stories we recorded the registration of the first disputes resolution scheme. This is important, as all advisers will need to belong to a scheme under the new regime.

Also we had news that the Open Polytechnic has put off assessing portfolios under the Code of Conduct's Standard Set C so it can spend more time training advisers.

The third regulatory story reported changes Cabinet has approved to plug some holes in the financial adviser legislation.

Good Returns also reports on the IFA's submission on the draft Code of Professional Conduct, in particular its call for greater recognition of the CFP designation.

On a different tack we have a look into the latest funds flow figures which show that many of the boutique managers are starting to get more support from investors. Many of these firms are not members of the ISI and maybe they will get even more support when the ISI's ban on members paying commissions to advisers comes into force?

One of the more bizzare stories of recent times has been the fall of Mr Good Guy Kevin Podmore. At St Laurence, Podmore has stood for openness and integrity, but as reported, his downfall has been quite spectacular. While this is going on some vulture is trying to buy St Laurence debentures at discounted prices. Luckily our ever vigilent Securities Commission has put out a warning to investors.

Across town in Wellington the Commerce Commission has decided to have a look at how the First Step trusts were sold to see if there is some sort of case to answer. Pity no one looked at the Bridgecorp offer documents when they were in the market. The news for these investors continues to be bad. The firm's receivers have sent out their latest update and there is little in it to cheer up debenture holders.

Hardly a week goes by without South Canterbury Finance making headlines. Yesterday Standard & Poor's reassessed the firm's credit rating and gave it some instruction on what it needs to do to get off credit watch negative. Earlier in the week the SCF sweetened its rates to investors to help match up its deposits with its lending book.

Speaking of lending, ANZ National increased home loan rates last night and a speech from Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard yesterday suggested the first OCR rise could be imminent if the string of economic news remains positive.

We wrap up the week with quite a few new appointments. These include some significant changes at Sovereign, the ISI appointing a comms manager and The Investment Store losing a business development manager. All the details are here.

In Jobs we have a new listing today with TOWER Health and Life looking for a National Sales Manager.

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KiwiSaver mismatch a 'huge challenge' for advisers »

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