Honour for KiwiSaver pioneer
Fund manager Carmel Fisher is proud of the company she’s keeping on the New Year honours list, but not overawed.
Fisher, who built the multibilliondollar Fisher Funds KiwiSaver business from scratch, has been made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
She’s rubbing shoulders on the honours list with Warehouse founder and philanthropist Stephen Tindall, who has been knighted, and former ASB chief executive Barbara Chapman, also named a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
But after building a KiwiSaver business only topped in size by those of the banks, which looks after the retirement savings of more than a quarter of a million people, Fisher believes she’s earned her honour.
Retired for over a year, Fisher was, along with Brian Gaynor from Milford Asset Management, the closest thing this country has to a fund manager who is also a household name.
Though Fisher, who now manages her family portfolio of investments, believes ‘‘a lot of people won’t have a clue what my business does’’, around 270,000 certainly do. That’s the number of KiwiSavers and other investors who have money with Fisher Funds, which she founded in 1998.
It was looking after just under $4.5 billion of KiwiSaver money at the end of September, though Fisher Funds’ total funds under management is over $8b.
‘‘I started Fisher Funds for the birth of my first daughter,’’ Fisher said. ‘‘It was a business that I thought I could manage while raising a family. It was perfect for that.’’
She ran it from her Takapuna home with her co-founder and husband Hugh, and as her child grew (and a second daughter was added to the family), so the business grew. ‘‘I have often referred to Fisher Funds as my third child,’’ she said.
Fisher had built her reputation as a fund manager at Prudential and then Sovereign, but she wanted control over her own destiny as she started a family.
Early growth of Fisher Funds was gradual, she said. The business built scale, and a 50,000-investor base, through the launch of three listed investment companies: Kingfish, Barramundi and Marlin Global.
But it was when KiwiSaver was created just over a decade ago that Fisher Funds’ growth really took off.
Growth in its KiwiSaver client base came organically as Fisher built a reputation as a fund manager who
‘‘A lot of people won’t have a clue what my business does.’’ Carmel Fisher
knew how to talk to ordinary people. She was a regular commentator on markets in the media, pioneering the use of video content to educate KiwiSavers.
In 2011 Fisher Funds took over the Huljich KiwiSaver scheme, which it hit trouble in 2010 when fund manager and founder Peter Huljich was forced to admit to transactions that artificially boosted performance figures, which led to him being fined at the Auckland District Court.
But it was a risk. ‘‘Yes, you acquire a whole lot of clients, but they may choose to leave you the next day, in which case you have paid a lot of money for not a lot.’’
But they stayed, and in 2013, Fisher pulled off a ‘‘David and Goliath’’ deal to buy the Tower KiwiSaver scheme. ‘‘It was a business that was five times the size of Fisher Funds,’’ she said. And again, the clients Fisher Funds acquired stayed.
‘‘That was one of the most satisfying aspects of my whole career, building a loyal client base.’’
The deal also bought TSB bank on as a co-owner of Fisher Funds. The bank eventually bought 100 per cent of the business in 2017.
The career of fellow Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit Barbara Chapman was charted over a similar time period to Fisher’s.
Chapman was chief executive of ASB from 2011 to 2018, and was a champion for improving diversity at senior levels in business.
She was an inaugural trustee of the New Zealand Equal Employment Opportunities Trust, and was chair from 1995 to 2001. She was a member of the Champions for Change, is a member of Global Women New Zealand, and an inaugural member of the 25 Percent Group, which aims to improve gender diversity at senior management levels and within the nation’s boardrooms.
Chapman was also chair of Oxfam New Zealand from 1999 to 2002.