Kiwi Wealth runs two diversified investment strategies, one that’s lower risk and one that’s higher risk. We allocate money across these two portfolios, creating a total risk allocation determined by an individual client’s risk profile.
Each strategy sits on a foundation of asset class beta (market exposures) and risk premia (the returns expected for taking risk). This foundation is overlaid with focused active management adding additional value from multiple sources.
We seek to create risk efficient portfolios that utilise a wide practical set of investment activities subject to ethical, liquidity, transparency and cost efficiency tests.
We follow an integrated bottom up (security level) as well as top down (macro) approach with four main areas of emphasis:
Our investment goal is to deliver higher returns, with lower risk, than common market index portfolios over the long-term - after all costs, fees, and taxes.
We seek to be transparent and open with investors, providing detailed commentary and visibility around investment strategy and positioning.
The costs associated with implementing an investment strategy - including trading costs, fees and tax - can be large drains on returns over the long run. One of Kiwi Wealth’s strengths is our ability to disintermediate, investing directly to cut out middle-man costs for clients.
We seek to gain the most cost-effective access to various investments. In many cases we build bottom-up portfolios with individual investments to minimise costs. In other cases, we utilise Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) or allocate funds to external managers - if they have particular expertise and it's cost effective.
We actively manage currency risk. The default position for the Fixed Interest strategy is 100% hedged to the New Zealand dollar. For the Growth strategy, the default position is 50-70% hedged to the New Zealand dollar (depending on the client).