Fisher Funds - Takapuna

Have had my kiwisaver with Fisher funds from its conception. Have been super happy with their service, especially impressed with how quickly they helped free my money up when purchasing my house.

The person I spoke to was helpful and quickly actioned my requests. Very knowledgeable efficient advice. Thank you.

READ THIS BEFORE COMMITTING YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY TO FISHER FUNDS. I had a long investment relationship with Fisher Funds (FF), KiwiSaver since inception plus managed funds.  Many hundreds of thousands.  I did my research and liked FF's investment philosophy and of course returns.   There were bumps along the way as various external factors hit markets and impacted returns.   FF managed these events well and gave me confidence to remain invested. However in the past 12 months things started to get a bit wobbly .   FF have not managed the market factors very well.  Yes there are challenges with Covid, current and emerging conflicts and the domino impact on supply chains, growth and environmental considerations (aka the re-emergence of fossil fuels / implications on climate change).  This is translating to levels of inflation not seen for 30 years years and a major impact on economies as many sectors contract.   FF are demonstrating that they simply do not have Investment Managers with experience in choosing appropriate investments in this environment. If you peel away the layers, FF's approach is to beat the requisite benchmarks across their various funds.  This requires a balancing act of making sure it has sufficient exposure to investments in these benchmarks at a reasonable level while trying to beat the benchmark fund through identifying potential investment 'gems'.   I can provide many examples of where this approach has come unstuck but I'll focus on just two: - Income fund.  This is supposed to be a lower risk investment fund with investments in bonds and fixed interest.  'My' expectations are (in a low inflation environment) that returns will be at least positive but conservatively so (e.g. 1 to 4% return p.a.).   This fund is down approximately 6% in the past two years.   $100,000 invested two years ago is now worth approx. $94,000 today.   FF failed to re-position their investments and are now generating returns well below their benchmark and unfortunately the returns have been negative for almost two years now. - International fund.   I see behaviour by FF, similar to what I observed in the share market crash of the late 1980's, of buying into companies on the downside where there is still more downside to come ('We increased our position in Meta because we like its fundamentals etc' and they have retained sizeable portfolio weightings in Alibaba and Tenscent Holdings Ltd, notwithstanding the challenges of owning investments that are dominciled in China.  FYI Meta is down 39% year on year and down over 50% since its peak last year, Alibaba is down 61% YoY and down nearly 75% since its peak in 2020, Paypal is down 68% YoY and down nearly 75% since its peak.   The retention of Paypal is particularly confusing given the increased disruption in this space including Apple.  Most problematic and illustrative of the 'jumping in on the downside' was FF's recent investment into Netflix; according to FF 'the drop in share price now offered value'.   In the less than TWO months since FF invested into Netflix, the shares have dropped by approximately 43% (45% discount from November highs approx. of $691 a share equates to a buy in price of approx. US$380, current share price US$216)!!  Other well researched investment commentators have provided good insights into the challenges / downsides facing Netflix (aka they rate Netflix a sell, not a buy opportunity). Yes I have selectively picked on some of the worse performing investments across FF's investment portfolio.  Unfortunately FF's recent performance, across pretty much all its funds, has performed below its benchmarks, in some cases they are significantly below.   A few months ago, being uncomfortable with their investment decisions I started to tactically withdraw from FF as I needed to re-balance my risk and 'stem the bleeding'.   So far I have been happy with this decision.

I have been emailing my advisors for a meeting since April and cannot elicit a response from anyone. Service has vanished and returns are plunging. Not a good look! Where are you Guy and Tiffany???

Absolutely *shocking* losses on their Kiwisaver fund. It's one thing to make a short term loss, but when it not only fails to recover but worsens (particularly when other Kiwisaver providers still manage to provide growth), one begins to suspect that there's something systematically wrong with Fisher Fund's strategy.

You're told to keep your money with managed funds because doing so might help you to keep pace with inflation. Here's the reality. Not only does FF fail to keep pace with inflation, they can't so much as hold on to what they have. There comes a point where saving with FF feels like throwing good money after bad.

Customer service was impeccable. Made transferring my kiwisaver to them extremely easy. When I had issues they phoned me as they had realised there were issues and helped me with solutions to fix this.

As a 20 year + investor the Service level delivery has been restored < Part % apply but not visible in the (client) Portal ... So being foretold is being forewarned. I can now plan Dollar cost averaging without affecting a re balance not intended . Thanks Karl , . Confidence restored .....