Kyoda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald, A chance for New Zealand to lead change.
In the world of ethical investing.
As of last year, more than half a billion dollars of New Zealander's Kiwisaver and other retail investments were lent to countries on a high alert for human rights violations. The new paper from MOTU Research urges fund managers and industry bodies to lift standards. But what does ethical investing mean and how can you tell how your funds are
being used? Today? On the Front Page, lead researcher Anne Marie Brook is with us to break down the paper and how we might be able to be socially responsible with our investment instuments. So, Anne Marie, can you explain the main focus and purpose I suppose of this research.
Yeah, So, this research is all about helping people get more insight into what their money is supporting when they invest.
So we wanted to find out what extent the money and all of our key we Saver accounts is being lent to countries with good versus bad human rights practices, And I mean not everyone may be aware that in their key saver accounts there's a mix of investments across different types of assets, so it includes both shares and companies, and then also investments and government bonds, and it's that
government bond part that we're focused on. So government, you know, investments and government bonds are essentially loans to the governments who have issued those bonds. And so the question then is which governments do New Zealanders want to be lending to. We looked at lending to governments at both ends of the human rights spectrum, so we looked at lending to the best performers and the worst performers.
On the worst performance.
Side, we found that about half a billion dollars is being linked lent to governments with the worst.
Human rights performance. And the thing that people.
Might be surprised to hear is that currently there's just
no system for evaluating that. So there's some responsible investment certifications that focus mainly on investments and companies, so you know, you often hear, for example, research about you know, how much money and key sover is being invested in weapons manufacturers and things like that, but right now there's no system that monitors the kind of human through human rights lens investments in sovereign bonds government bonds, which is what all of us are doing through our KEE we saver,
whether we know it or not. So we're really just wanting to, you know, bring more attention and insight into that part of the investment.
That's which countries did report those high alerts for human rights abuses?
And what does high alert even mean?
Good question.
So we use data from the Human Rights Measurement Initiative or HERMEI for short, which is a global NGO that consistently tracks human rights across countries. And HERMI looks at a range of rights, so includes things like killings and torture, freedom of speech, and rights to things like education and health. And then we defined the worst performers or the high alert countries are the ones that are in the bottom ten percent of the world across those rights, plus any
countries that have been reliably accused of genocide. And based on that definition, there were four worst performing countries that Kiwi Saber Funds are currently investing in and they are China, Israel, Kata and Saudi Arabia.
How do bank managed funds compare to non bank funds in terms of those investments in these high alert countries.
The banks are managing by far the majority of kysaber and retail investment assets in New Zealand, so I think in total they are managing two thirds of all investments in New Zealand. And what we found is that they are seventy five percent of the investments in the worst performing countries are coming from the bank funds, so that's slightly the bank funds are slightly more likely to invest in the worst performing funds than the non bank funds.
This I should also mention this research was a snapshot in time as of March twenty twenty four, and there have been changes since and so when we're talking about bank funds, we included ben Z funds at that date, but since since then Benz has sold those assets to Harbor Asset Management, so we would get slightly different results now.
And so can people check what their can we savor is going towards?
In the paper, we do look at what.
Was the case as of March twenty twenty four, but we know that things will have changed since then. The main point of this research was not to provide up to date detail on individual KVSAP funds. There was more to point out the fact that there is no system that allows individual people to get that up to date information. So we're calling for industry bodies like the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia and other organizations like Mindful Money, which is a New Zealand charity, to.
Make it easier.
They're already kind of offering some certification programs and Mindful Money have an excellent website where you can go and look at your kiwisaver and see how it's investing in companies that are, you know, for example, fossil fuel producers or weapons manufacturers. But currently that information is not available on which of each kiwisaver funder and to the extent, which of it's investing in the best versus the worst countries.
So yeah, that's kind of the key point really that we're trying to draw attention to the fact that this missing information. Individuals can contact their key we saver provider and ask for information about tell their provider that they care about this, and even consider switching providers if their current provider is not taking this issue seriously.
Is there any evidence of I suppose rights washing or is even misleading ethical labeling among these retail funds.
No, I wouldn't say we found any direct evidence of that. But what we did find is that the existing certifications that are available are not currently set up to evaluate this particular asset.
Class of investments.
So for example, and you know, and I want to emphasize also that this field of responsible investment is very much emerging. Ten or twenty years ago, you know, the sort of certifications that we have now didn't even exist. So I like to think that it's going to continue to move in the right direction in the is to come. But for example, we found that sixty seven percent of the lending to the worst performing countries was coming from
funds that have a rare certification. So that's some kind of responsible investment certification from the Responsible Investment Association Australasia. And now that's I wouldn't call that rights washing because what RIA say is that they're really just telling you whether what the fund is claiming is actually true to label. And generally what they're doing is they might be telling you that a fund's climate related claims, for example, are valid.
It's just not telling you anything at all about how much of the fund might be being lent to governments with very poor human rights record.
The typical thing for funds is that they want to make money, so they tend to chase short term returns, and often those short term returns are in companies that do things that are pretty terrible. And we survey the public each year to find out what people want to avoid, and they want to avoid things like weapons, but also human rights violations, animal cruelty, fossil fuels, and social harm like tobacco and gambling.
And so on.
So what needs to be done? What are the next steps? Because the public has changed the tide, so to speak.
Before you mentioned the weapons manufacturing, everyone was up in arms about their can we saver retirement investments going into things like weapons or.
Drugs or war in general? So we've done it before, how can we do it again?
Yeah?
Absolutely. Each individual has quite a lot of power in terms of where they direct their chemisab balances, and even if their balances are relatively small, if they talk to their friends and family about it, it can really.
Add up to quite a growing movement.
And it's definitely that desire by individual kiwis to be investing more responsibly. That has led to a lot of these shifts we've already seen, so in terms of I mean, I would say there's just tons of opportunities here.
And when we looked at the best.
Performing countries, so we looked at which funds are invested only in the best performing countries.
And you know, there are thirty five.
Countries in the world that are in that kind of best performing category, and thirty one of them have really significant and liquid bond markets, so they're very investable. But what we found is that there's not very not very many funds out are investing exclusively in a diversified range of those best performing countries.
So for the funds themselves.
I would say there's a huge opportunity for them to offer more access to investments in those best performing countries. For industry bodies, I think there's a huge opportunity to set up systems to consider human rights more consistently when it comes to investing in government bonds. And then for individual people themselves, you know, the opportunity is to tell their provider that they care and consider switching if their provider doesn't care, and if they do, does.
Something like that need government intervention.
So New Zealand has good disclosure regulation, so funds are required to disclose exactly which assets are invested in, and it was because of that regulatory framework that we were able to do this research, which I would say is quite groundbreaking globally because most other countries don't have a data set that would allow this type of research to
be done. But yet there is more that can be done in the sense that often what the responsible investment certifications focus on are the things that funds are required to do by under regulation. And so now there are increasing climate related disclosures and so that has led the certification programs to focus on more climate related stuff. So it is more regulation would be helpful, but I don't think it's necessary.
So just to be clear, if I called up my provider and said I want information about how my money is being spent, how.
Easy or difficult is it for me to get that information?
It probably varies from provider to provider.
Right now, there's an excellent website that Mindful Money Operate, where you can put in the name of your kivsaver and get all that information in terms of the company shares that your kevsaver invested in.
It just hasn't yet been.
Expanded to also include information on the government bonds that your key resaver is published in. So there's already platforms that exist that could give you that answer, you know, really easily without you even need are in needing to call your provider, but they haven't yet included this segment of the market, and so in the meantime you would need to call your provider and.
Ask they should be able to answer your questions.
So did you that for you as researchers?
Did you have to ask individual each individual provider for that information for that snapshot in time?
No, we got the data from all funds are required to disclose their asset holdings in the disclosed Register of the company's office, and that information is disclosed I think every six months.
I might have that wrong.
That's a data set that can be downloaded, but it's not very accessible to the individual person. So no, we didn't need And there's I think seven hundred and something kisov and retail investment funds that were included in that data set.
How aware do you do you think New Zealanders are generally about the human rights profile of their investments.
Do you think that they'll see this and be quite shocked?
Some of them probably will be. It's probably something that
a lot of people just haven't thought about before. We do know from surveys of New Zealanders that human rights is something that they care about in their investments, but I think people often their attention falls on the human rights practices of companies whose shares they own, So you know, is this company complicit in any kind of major human rights violations in terms of their business operations, And there's much less attention being given to the investments, what investments
are supporting in terms of loans to government through purchases of selfign bonds. So yeah, I think it's probably just something that hasn't been on the horizon.
And you mentioned that it's significantly easier here to get this information rather than the country's of a sentase.
Do you think that this research.
Will contribute to a global discussion about how ethical investments work.
Yeah?
Absolutely, this is groundbreaking research, not just for New Zealand but globally, because the sovereign bond asset class is being systematically ignored globally by responsible and ethical investing.
Not completely.
There are like individual ethical funds that take it very seriously, but the majority of the investment market is largely ignoring this issue.
Do you think it's well, we're moving in a positive direction.
I suppose when it comes to ethical investments, because it was not that long ago when we were talking about weapons manufacturing.
Look, it's an evolving field, and I would say over the past couple of decades it has very much been moving in a positive direction and I see no reason why that won't continued.
Thanks for joining us, Ann Marie.
Thanks so much for having me pleasure.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also our editor.
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.