Boutiques to touch base with back-office buyer group Investment News | Investment News NZ

Offshore competitors are vying for a seat at the NZ fund administration table with local boutique managers set to consider a menu of alternatives next month.

The Boutique Investment Group (BIG) has scheduled meetings with Australian start-up, The Fund Alliance, early in March to weigh up potential challenger back-office service suppliers in three areas.

In a note to members, BIG says The Fund Alliance – headed by former Trustees Executors (TE) chief operating officer, Geoff Rimmer – will introduce a foreign exchange system, an ESG-reporting platform and a “fund administrator and a registry provider that may be interested in challenging Apex”.

Apex, formerly MMC, and TE are the two largest players in the NZ retail fund admin and registry market with others such as Link and Appello also in the game.

Launched late last year, The Fund Alliance, has first targeted the NZ market, where both Rimmer and former TE chief, Ryan Bessemer (who serves as technical adviser to the enterprise), have recent experience.

According to The Fund Alliance website, the group’s “priorities for 2024” include introducing:

new fund administration providers to NZ in the first half of this year, offering services such as “API and AI enabled capabilities and advanced workflow engines”;
standardised ESG and reporting systems designed to “ease the complexity and cost of climate related disclosures”; and,
global foreign exchange capabilities for fund managers.

Rimmer “floated the idea of BIG collaborating to purchase services” last year, the note to members says.

BIG has scheduled meetings with The Fund Alliance in Wellington and Auckland early in March.

Established as a loose collective of licensed manager compliance experts in 2015, the industry body formalised as BIG in 2020 with about 25 members from non institution-owned firms and service providers.

BIG is chaired by Simon Haines, Nikko Asset Management legal counsel.