[Weekly Wrap] Is no news good news for shareholders?

One of the big stories this week was the news that wasn’t. We had heard rumours that TOWER was to use its annual general meeting in Auckland yesterday to announce that it was selling its life insurance business. The word was that Fidelity Life was lining up to buy it.

Friday, March 22nd 2013, 11:50AM

by Susan Edmunds

But yesterday, when shareholders lined up to ask the board about the future of the company, they weren’t revealing anything. Chairman Steve Smith said shareholders would be told if any deal was done - but until then, they wouldn't comment on media speculation. Industry insiders had mixed views about what lay ahead. One said the talk of a sale could be a strategic move to unsettle competitors while another said it was a no-brainer that the life insurance business would sell, and it was just a matter of when.

The other big news story this week was that Australia's LM Investment Management has voluntarily called in administrators. The LM First Income Mortgage Fund has been frozen for years with $100 million of Kiwi investors' money in it. They had been expecting a payout this month. It's now looking unlikely they will get it. We are still trying to get direct comment from LM in Australia.

The anti-money laundering legislation was generating more headlines as it draws nearer. RFAs are apparently unsure of what their requirements have been under the regime, and the PAA has asked for advice. Meanwhile, fund managers have been told that while they can outsource their administration, they can't outsource their AML requirements.

Do you have clients on your books who don't provide much income and are hard to get hold of? It's tempting to just forget about lower-value clients who are hard to get hold of but it might be worth getting rid of them, according to this story, because the FMA requires that you have seen all your clients since the regulatory regime came into effect almost two years ago.

On the KiwiSaver front, Mercer has weighed in on the argument that default funds should be changed to "life stages" settings, saying that won't work if young people are planning to withdraw money to buy a first home.

There was a lot of action on the people front this week, with moves at Mint, TOWER and BNZ, among others. And there have been some interesting developments on the mortgage side of the equation, as banks cut rates and fight for customers, as predicted after Graeme Wheeler's dovish OCR announcement last week.

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