Northern Trust wins bid for ANZ’s passive investment suite

Asset management firm Northern Trust will take over ANZ’s $5 billion passive investment suite from outgoing Vanguard Group.

Wednesday, October 28th 2020, 6:27AM

ANZ have revealed, in an announcement, that Northern Trust Investments have been appointed to replace Vanguard in managing the bank’s passive investments.

The move follows Vanguard’s leaving most of their managed funds in the Australian and New Zealand markets. The move left billions of dollars of KiwiSaver investments facing an uncertain future.

The slack of ANZ’s $5 billion chunk of passive investments will now be picked up by Northern Trust.

Regarding the move, ANZ chief investment officer Paul Huxford said that “we have been working for some time on enhancing the investment approach for these portfolios. We wanted to incorporate more active management, as well as an increased level of focus on ESG factors and climate change considerations.”

The appointment follows a review by ANZ Investments of its external fund managers for the international fixed interest asset class.

As a result of this review Northern Trust was appointed to replace Vanguard as the external fund manager for both the ANZ Wholesale International Sovereign Fund and the ANZ Wholesale International Credit Fund.

“We believe Northern Trust stood out with a very strong sustainable investing platform and impressive factor-based investing approach,” said Huxford.

Northern Trust has over US$1.0 trillion in assets under management, ranking it as one of the 20 largest asset management firms globally. It works with a number of sophisticated asset owners and pension funds across the globe.

The announcement follows a swathe of changes for the major Australian banks. Most recent of which saw reports of Westpac dropping their financial adviser wing to Forsyth Barr.

Tags: ANZIIF awards Northern Trust