Time for a makeover

Saturday, July 9th 2005, 3:58AM

I bought a new car the other day and driving it along last night made me think that it provides quite a good similie for the savings industry.

The old car was a beat up Nissan Sentra which had served us well and was functional but highly unlikely to turn heads - except maybe the panel beaters!

The new mobile is a pretty sexy Citreon C4 which is smart (does all sorts of things automatically) is good looking and popular.

Maybe, I thought, this is what the savings industry needs - a good makeover for the products and services. After all a couple of product providers told me yesterday that fewer and fewer advisers are using what they make.

What also got me thinking was that some of the names we have used in the past to describe bits of the savings industry need to change.

A while back banks and the like started calling savings products wealth management products. I thought this was a bit dorky, and pretentious. Now I have second thoughts.

Another change is managed funds. Craig Stobo started calling them collective investment vehicles (CIVs). Maybe that is a better option than managed funds and will help create a new, positive, image.

In the United Kingdom a while back the investment trust company industry pooled their resources and started some generic promotion of their products and their benefits with the ITS campaign. It made investment trusts hip and more attractive.

Is this something the CIV industry could do in New Zealand?

But back to my car - I like driving it, and it makes me feel good (plus it gets me from A to B). That's what the savings industry needs to do.

PS: There is some dispute in the family over whose car it is!

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