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(Pictured: Susan Thorp) The average SMSF member is likely to be less “highly numerate” than the average member of a big super fund, but more financially numerate and more knowledgeable of the rules surrounding super. The SMSF trustee is also likely to be more trusting of financial services professionals, perhaps to the point of naivety. These…

 (Pictured: Paul Woolley) The study of capital market dysfunctionality, which former fund manager Paul Woolley embarked on in 2007, investing £5 million (A$9.25 million) of his own money to establish three study centres around the world, is turning out to be a unified body of theory. Woolley addressed the eighth annual conference organized by University of…

 (Pictured: Bruce Murphy) Bruce Murphy, managing director responsible for the Australian funds management business of BNY Mellon, is to leave that position to take up a senior role at one of the firm’s affiliate managers, Insight Pareto. A search is underway to fill the job. Murphy has been in the current role for nearly five years….

 (Pictured: David Chaplin) The NZ$21.4 billion (A$19.3 billion) KiwiSaver Scheme, which is shared between 35 banks, managers and other service providers, has seen an uptick in investor switching in the past year, with the two Australian-owned banks, ANZ and BNZ (owned by NAB), winning much of the inflows. The annual study of the market, produced by…

(Pictured: Andrew Harrison) White Outsourcing, the specialist funds manager administrator, has entered the custody market, concentrating on the small end – primarily boutique managers – which is a segment that has been increasingly eschewed by the big custodian banks. It has entered a new arrangement with JP Morgan to take on the global custody component on…

(Pictured: Iain Dunstan) Iain Dunstan has been appointed the managing director, wealth, at Rubik Financial, the listed banking and wealth management systems company, replacing Wayne Wilson, who resigned recently. Dunstan, most recently the regional director of global technology group Avalog, was previously the chief executive and a shareholder in Bravura Solutions. He takes up his new…

(Pictured: Chris Tse) The unlikely alliance of FTSE, the index provider owned by the London Stock Exchange, and ASFA, Australia’s super fund association, has teamed up again for a new series of indices in Australia, this time for bonds. The FTSE ASFA Australia Bond Index Series is being sold on its independence from any of the…

(Pictured:  Ian MacRitchie) Ian MacRitchie is a veteran financial planner with an A-list client list who still likes helping people – a character trait that has made a lot of his clients happy and, more importantly, given a better chance in life for many underprivileged people in Timor Leste (East Timor). He spoke with Greg…

 (Pictured: Stephen Miller) As the fallout from the Bill Gross departure from PIMCO reverberated around the world last week, one of its main competitors, BlackRock, got lucky with the timing of its launch of a fixed income global opportunities (FIGO) fund for Australian investors, just like the one Gross famously managed at his old shop. According…

 (Pictured: Doug Hodge) One of Bill Gross’s legacies at PIMCO, the firm he co-founded 43 years ago, is a refurbished room for yoga, pilates and other exercises at Newport Beach head office. Gross was a bit like that and PIMCO, for years, indulged him. While the room’s future is unclear, the occasional US$200 million annual remuneration…