Comments on: Kiwisaver - ethical investment?

By: Olio

Olio — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:32:01 +0000

Asteron offers a “responsible” option as one of 7 or so to choose from. Problem is there is a 7 year minimum inverstment period if you choose this. So no good for people like me who want to take advantage of the first home buyer govt. contribution within the next few years. (Checked this out with Asteron a couple of months ago - probably still current info.)
Does anyone know more about this Gareth Morgan character?
(yeh i kno this is a real old thread and probably everyone moved onto different topics bit i’m still interested!)

By: ecomonkey

ecomonkey — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:26:59 +0000

Thanks Russel - interesting report.

I have received info from Asteron but to be honest, negative screening on it’s own just doesn’t work for me. IMHO it is not true ethical or socially responsible investment to simply avoid investing in certain companies. Investment in clearly ethical & sustainable companies is well overdue.

I hope the options change soon, in the meantime, I’ll keep holding out for Prometheus - fingers crossed!

By: Russel

Russel — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:00:14 +0000

Hi Ecomonkey -

I did some research on this it’s here -

http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR11066.html

Basically only Asteron at this stage - Prometheus still investigating whether to do it.

cheers

Russel

By: ecomonkey

ecomonkey — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 06:46:17 +0000

I am waiting to hear if Prometheus can offer Kiwisaver. Does anyone know of any other truly ethical investment plans? Surely there are some other options out there???

By: strawhouse

strawhouse — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 08:34:25 +0000

I spoke to Asteron yesterday - they are apparently launching their ethical Kiwisaver fund in the next couple of weeks. If you ring them they will put you on a mailing list to send the investment statement once it’s all ‘official’

By: bjchip

bjchip — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:49:37 +0000

There seems no “ethical” investment choice…. I would therefore be inclined to one that is NZ owned and operated, and there are a couple of those.

I note that damned few of them advise of their rates either.

Makes me a bit unhappy that there is no insurance provided for any of them, now that we have added Bridgecorp to the stack of dead losses that have consumed the cash of NZ investors.

That has to be ONE of the most important reasons why NZ investors choose to invest in housing… the near total lack of meaningful oversight, transparency, regulation and just plain honesty in the rest of the investment environment here.

respectfully
BJ

By: buzz

buzz — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 19:14:25 +0000

Wouldn’t it be nice if this thread stuck to the topic - which was “Ethical Investment” in case you’ve all forgotten.
For those of us free to choose our own KiwiSaver provider, can someone please recommend an ethical one.

By: Kevyn

Kevyn — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:43:12 +0000

Russell, Does Land Transport NZ have an ethical investment policy for the funds that it has to invest at the start of multi-year major transport projects? Since it can no longer pre-commit funds from future revenues (standard practice between 1924 and 2002) and now has to have the funds available it must have several hundred millions invested somewhere.

By: phil u

phil u — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:09:02 +0000

thank you kahikatea for saying what i couldn’t summon up the energy to..

phil(whoar.co.nz)

By: kahikatea

kahikatea — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:52:37 +0000

It’s actually nothing to do with who reads the Herald. The Herald’s political poll is not a poll of their own readership, it is a poll of wider society. It happens to be biased against the Green Party, as is the TV1 poll, because of the methods they use to try and get an accurate sample. In contrast NBR polls are biased in favour of the Green Party, because of a fault in the way they go about trying to get an accurate sample. If the polls reflected the bias of the publications or their readers, I doubt that the NBR would be the one with the most pro-Green results.

I tend to assume that the TV3 polls (and the Sunday Star times ones, but they only do them in election year) come closest to giving an accurate result.

The listener’s poll WAS a poll of their own readership, and an extremely unscientific one at that, because it was only the people who choose to reply. It probably gives you an accurate picture of how popular the various parties are among the subset of Listener readers who like filling out readers’ poll.