How We Invest

Preserving and growing client wealth is our guiding philosophy. We believe diversification is the key to this. Our focus is on protecting and carefully growing your wealth. Our in-house investment management team use an active, global investment strategy, designed to provide strong, long-term returns, high diversification and ample liquidity. Our strategies are backed by in-depth research and analysis, and a strong risk management framework.
Our investment objective is to deliver returns greater than the benchmarks we’ve set for each portfolio, with lower risk – after all fees, costs and taxes.
Our objective is guided by the following principles:

Responsible investing
We invest our members’ money in companies that meet our strict environmental, social and governance criteria. For example, we don’t invest in nuclear weapons, tobacco and whaling. We are committed to Responsible Investment and have a long-standing Responsible Investment Policy, which applies to all investment decisions we make and specifies the types of companies that we won’t invest in.

Global investor
We are a global investor, meaning that we invest in companies on world share markets. We favour global markets because New Zealand and Australian share markets account for only a small percentage of the world's capital markets (around 4%) and New Zealanders tend to have most of their wealth invested locally already – through their homes and jobs. Therefore, there are clear liquidity and diversification benefits to investing with a global view. Client funds allocated to fixed interest are invested in a mix of local and foreign fixed interest securities. This approach contrasts with many local fund managers who have relatively high exposures to Australasian companies. In the New Zealand investment industry, where global shares and fixed interest investment strategies are typically outsourced to a foreign manager, our in-house global capability is a key point of difference.

Handpicked securities
As an active manager, we seek to buy shares in high-quality companies at a reasonable price to ensure more flow of income and business sustainability.
Our definition of a high-quality company is one that will meet four or more of the following criteria:
1. A proven track record through the business cycle
2. A sustainable competitive advantage
3. A clear and consistent strategy
4. Strong corporate governance and capital management practices
5. A global revenue base


Given these investment criteria, many of our share holdings are large multinational companies.
For fixed interest investments, we use broadly the same criteria. We look to invest in high-quality companies that generate cash sustainably in order to pay their obligations in a timely manner. Fixed interest securities will be selected from strong New Zealand issuers as well as large international issuers.
Expert investment management
RysonEx, our in-house investment management team, actively manages the underlying investments in our members’ accounts with the aim of building and protecting their wealth. Your money not only gets invested in New Zealand but across the globe too, helping to diversify your investment.