Industry seeks help for policy
Thesavings industry in New Zealand is reaching out to the broader business community in an effort to provide the Government with a savings policy.
The Investment Savings and Insurance Association (ISI), which represents fund managers and insurers, has launched a group it calls Saving New Zealand.
The new group is designed to be a partnership that includes member groups, such as employers, unions and business.
ISI chief executive Vance Arkinstall says the partnership has come about because the industry has gotten nowhere talking amongst itself.
He says it is time to take the discussion to a wider level. It is also appropriate it happens this year, as the Periodic Review Group is doing its six-yearly report on the country’s savings framework.
“Saving New Zealand is intended to shift the current inertia around savings to a broader vision, with the objective of achieving an integrated savings framework for New Zealanders by the end of 2003.
“This (partnership) is not a mass marketing or advertising campaign telling people to save more.
“It’s a process to develop a savings framework for New Zealand, and then to look at some of the policy options in more detail,” ISI chairman and Sovereign managing director Simon Swanson says.
The ISI says incremental policy changes by government and ‘You must save for your retirement’ advertising from fund managers doesn’t increase the savings rate.
“Getting people to save more isn’t something that the Government can do with a new policy here and there. And having financial institutions hammering people with the ‘save more’ message certainly doesn’t work,” ISI deputy chairman and AMP New Zealand managing director Ross Kent says.
Arkinstall says the partnership includes a proposed Savings Summit later this year.
“The summit will not be driven by ISI. We are prepared to make an initial investment to the project,” he says.
“We are prepared to put in the effort and hard yards to bring together a partnership with a balance of views.”
Arkinstall says the format and issues debated at the summit will be agreed by partnership. He says the ISI is prepared to live with the outcomes, even if it doesn’t necessarily agree with them.
AUTHOR
Phil Macalister
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