Dear all,

In this industry, we all know that the end of the financial year is one of the busiest times in the calendar, so I hope June has been a productive month for you all. 

New negative screen filter in Mosaic

This week we launched a new negative screen tool providing additional responsible investment (RI) insights to drive more informed investment decisions. Incorporated into our Mosaic platform, the tool provides detailed information about which fund managers incorporate negative screens into their investment process.

The negative screen filter allows advisers using Mosaic to select products that exclude securities from certain sectors or businesses employing particular practices. The tool covers all Zenith rated products.

While negative screens are just one of several approaches available when considering RI issues, it remains one of the most widely used approaches to managing ESG in client portfolios.  Log in to Mosaic to see this useful tool in action.

Celebrating the super sector

At the end of May, we were fortunate to be able to gather with representatives from right across the super industry to celebrate their hard work on behalf of their members at this year’s Chant West Super Fund Awards. It was such a privilege to join CEOs, CIOs and other fund executives to acknowledge their collective achievements after what’s obviously been another tough year for funds. I was reminded how funds’ continuous improvement mindset, along with a good dose of resilience, has been critical to drive change in the face of increasing complexity and more regulatory and reporting changes.

My congratulations go to Super Fund of the Year, UniSuper, Pension Fund of the Year, Telstra Super, and all other category winners on this fantastic acknowledgement of your hard work.

In further Chant West news, we recently added Cbus to our suite of super fund investment reports available in Mosaic, so I encourage you to take a look at the growing list of super fund reports available to subscribers next time you log-in to Mosaic.  

FE fundinfo integration

There’s a lot of excitement across our Australian teams about the combined business that we’re building as Zenith, Chant West and FE fundinfo come together as FE fundinfo Australia. The integration is progressing well and our initial focus has been on combining our operations, finance, legal & compliance, and HR functions.

Our current focus is on redefining the combined product and service strategy and this is particularly important as we work to understand the opportunities presented by our collective expertise, analysis, data and technology.

While the global learnings and shared operational intelligence are obvious benefits of coming together, I’m seeing first-hand the power of greater access to more extensive and timely data to do both our research and analysis, as well as better service the needs of our clients. We’re committed to leveraging the best each group has to offer to deliver a compelling proposition to all parts of the Australian market.

Upcoming events

On 23 June, I’ll be joining a Money Management industry webinar panel on ‘The future of managed accounts’. Matt Heine from Netwealth, Martin Morris from Praemium and Brett Sanders from Philo Capital Advisers will join me for a lively discussion about what it takes to create a successful managed account program, whether clients are getting a better outcome than from traditional advice, and how managed account portfolio managers are responding to the current economic environment. Register to attend this CPD-accredited webinar here.  

And while we’re on the topic of managed accounts, our Head of Consulting Steven Tang and Senior Investment Consultant Shailesh Jain, are presenting at the IMAP adviser roadshow this week and next, talking to the important & interesting topic of the various considerations for practices as they approach transitioning to a managed accounts program. Spaces are still available for the Brisbane roadshow – register here.

I wish you well for the new financial year and look forward to meeting with more of you in-person over coming months.

Best wishes,

David Wright
CEO, Zenith Investment Partners