NZ Herald 13 March 2021

AThat bank manager makes a good point. It’s much better if you can save for something rather than borrowing to buy it. Even though interest rates are at historical lows, earning interest still beats paying it. You want to be the winner, not the bank!

Anyway, that was a clever way for your brother to help you — and something some parents might consider doing for their children. Apparently many would-be first home buyers could manage to make payments on a mortgage — which are sometimes less than they are paying in rent — but they can’t get together a big enough deposit.

I like it that your brother wasn’t exposed to the risk of having to pay for the whole house.

In any situation like this, though, everyone should agree in advance about what’s going to happen if the house buyer can’t repay the loan as quickly as expected — or possibly ever.

I mentioned this briefly last week, but it needs to be underlined. All participants in any family loan should sit around a table and make a list of all the bad things that could happen — disability, death, a partnership break-up, job loss, bankruptcy. Be really gloomy with your scenarios. Then agree on how the loan would be resolved in each situation.

It wouldn’t be silly to include siblings who are not getting a loan — so they don’t later complain of unfairness.

Put the agreement in writing with everyone signing it, so there can be no claims of misunderstandings later. This could avoid a lot of anger and heartache.

P.S. A lawyer tells me such an agreement would have no legal standing unless the lender and borrower each had separate legal advice. Some families might want to get that advice. But others might feel that having an understanding of expectations in different situations is enough.

AThe best way to find info about any New Zealand managed fund is through the Smart Investor tool on sorted.org.nz. It covers KiwiSaver and non-KiwiSaver funds, and includes index (or passive) funds — which I prefer — and actively managed funds.

Unfortunately Smart Investor doesn’t separate New Zealand and international share funds. But there’s a way around that. Here’s how to use the tool:

• Click “compare” at the top, and then “KiwiSaver and Managed Funds”.
• Click “managed funds” and “aggressive”. The tool defines aggressive funds as those with 90 per cent or more growth assets — shares and commercial property. Obviously, you’ll skip the property funds, but consider share funds that hold a small percentage of non-share investments. That doesn’t really matter.
• Scroll down a little and you’ll see a “sort by” box. I suggest you click “Fees (lowest first)”. As I’ve said many times, high-fee funds don’t tend to do better than low-fee funds over time, so go for low fees and keep more of the return for yourself.
• Up will come a list of funds with some basic info about each. If you want international share funds, choose them by their names. Look for words like “global shares”, “total world”, “overseas shares” or “global equities”, and tick the “Compare” box to the right of those fund names.
• Stop when you have about half a dozen funds in your “Compare list” — scroll down to see it. Then click on each fund’s name to get all sorts of information, including the provider’s brief description, and the top ten investments.

You’ll notice that some funds are fully “hedged”, some are only partly hedged and some are unhedged.

Hedged funds use financial instruments to remove the effects of foreign exchange movements on the value of your investment. This is a plus sometimes and a minus at other times, depending on how the Kiwi dollar is faring.

We can’t know what future exchange rate movements will be, so you might want to choose a fund that is partly hedged. But I wouldn’t let that drive your choice. Share values fluctuate anyway, and a lack of hedging just adds to the fluctuations.

By the way, Smart Investor lists managed funds at all risk levels. You can also use it to find, for example, low-risk defensive or conservative funds that might be a substitute for bank term deposits.

AYou’re correct if we’re talking about investing directly in overseas shares. But if you do it the way I suggest, through a New Zealand-based international share fund, that’s all taken care of for you.

Sure, you will pay fees — often higher than on share funds based elsewhere. But I think it’s worth it because you don’t have to worry about the complications you mention. It also makes things much simpler after you die.

AYou’ve raised some interesting issues. Here are your questions, with Southern Cross’s replies:

• What is their total investment target? ($1 billion?)

Southern Cross doesn’t have an investment target as such. “The size of our investment portfolio is primarily determined by our need to exceed the minimum solvency requirements of the RBNZ’s solvency standard.” As the business grows, so do those requirements.

• Why is it so high now?

“The reader is focussing on the 2020 results, which did show a reasonable surplus, but on balance over the past five years surpluses have not been that large.” For example, in 2018 the investment portfolio totalled $482 million, compared with the current $535 million. “Over the course of those five years, the Society’s investment portfolio didn’t grow as quickly as the business.”

• Why can’t the annual surplus be reduced to an average of say $5 million a year?

“That amount isn’t enough to keep pace with the ever-increasing minimum solvency capital requirements set by the RBNZ as the Society’s business grows.

“The Society currently runs a solvency ratio of just over three times the minimum solvency capital set by the RBNZ.” On average, that requirement increases by about $7 million to $8 million a year. That means “the Society needs to make a $21 million to $25 million surplus per year.”

“To put it another way, our financial statements stipulate we aim to hold between five to seven months’ worth of expected claims for the ‘rainy day’ the reader talks about.

“Back in 2016, claims were $748 million. In 2020, they were $972 million. In order to stay at the midpoint of our target i.e., six months’ worth of claims, our investment portfolio should have grown by $112 million. It has only grown by $13 million.

“Over the past five years the Society has been doing what the reader is asking in the next question, which is keeping premiums and surpluses lower and allowing its solvency ratio to decline a bit.”

• Why couldn’t the residual be used to reduce the annual premium of long-standing members?

Long-standing members already get a better deal than newer members of the same age. “This is because they tend to claim significantly more, because the longer they have been a member, the more likely it is they have built up health issues covered by their policy.

“When looking at offering a premium discount of any sort to some members, it’s important to consider other members would need to fund it by paying higher premiums, because as a member-based health insurer, we don’t have any profit margin that we can use to fund discounts of this kind.

“However, we do apply a low claims discount of up to 10 per cent to a member’s premium at their policy renewal” when eligible.

• Why doesn’t Southern Cross invest in a variety of share market funds to improve its 3.6 per cent return to further reduce premiums?

“We already do. About 20 per cent of our investment portfolio is invested in growth assets such as international equities, listed property and infrastructure.”

However, investing in these assets increases investment risk, and there are also “heightened minimum solvency capital requirements laid out in the RBNZ solvency standards.

“That solvency constraint is specific to insurers and not one most other investment portfolios have to deal with. The upshot is that the Society does not have a lot of room to invest more than the current 20 per cent in growth assets.”

My comment: It seems the Reserve Bank rules — which are there to make sure insurance companies can pay claims — govern a lot of this. Southern Cross needs to operate with a buffer in case claims suddenly increase, which I suppose could happen in a disaster or epidemic. If the Society broke the rules, the Reserve Bank could intervene, and things would get pretty messy.

ASounds as if it’s all worth it.