Grosvernor, which bought the Fidelity Life KiwiSaver scheme last year is planning to merge its scheme with the life company’s one – rather than the other way around.
Grosvenor chief executive David Beattie says the proposed merger is being done this way around as the Grosvenor scheme is smaller. This, he says, makes it easier from a communications point of view as the company only has to communicate with 35,000 members rather than 60,000.
He also said that Grosvenor has a very good database of its members’ details. This is important as the Financial Markets Authority could turn down a merger proposal if a scheme has too many “gone no addresses”.
If that happened members would be allocated to default providers.
Beattie says after the proposed merger the nine Fidelity fund options will be available along with four funds brought over from Grosvenor.
These are: International shares, Trans-Tasman shares, an Ethical share fund and its, high octane Geared Growth Fund.
Beattie says since Grosvenor bought the Fidelity scheme it has brought $125 million of funds in house and the remaining $250 million has remained with outsourced managers.
Also NZ Guardian Trust is stepping down as Grosvenor’s trustee this month and both schemes will then have the same trustee, Public Trust.
He says the merger is due to be completed by June 30.
Grosvenor is also seeking to become a default provider. The government is due to announce who the default providers will be by the end of this month.