Exploring methods to generate solid returns

NZIER principal economist Aaron Drew is now a regular visitor to Hawke's Bay. Photo / Supplied

He has gone from billions to millions but is still learning.

Aaron Drew has chaired two meetings of Stewart Group's Investment Committee after his secondment last year by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER).

The NZIER principal economist said he became interested in the Hastings wealth management company two years ago, when he was with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, because of its relationship with US fund manager Dimensional.

The US company manages US$440 billion ($578 billion) using a structured passive investment model.

"I had done some presentations for the Super Fund, for the Small Investors Alliance, and I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion," he said.

"We were interested in so-called smart beta strategies - the idea there is you have a broad market exposure to equities or fixed interest or something but you just don't take that market cap-weighted exposure.

"You employ some algorithms to adjust the exposures to try and enhance your returns over what you can get with the index.

"It is a reasonably low cost and passive way to get exposure to global markets but there is a fair amount of evidence that you can enhance longer-run returns over strictly taking the market cap weights."

He said there was a good amount of research to support the proposition that premiums could be harvested, but it was easier said than done.

The amount of invested money using the strategy was "a very small fraction" worldwide.

"Implementation really matters, cost really matters and scale really, really matters.

"That's why the likes of Dimensional can be effective. They can drive down the execution costs - they can properly resource internal research."

When he left the Super Fund for NZIER's new Auckland office, Mr Stewart suggested his appointment to Stewart Group's committee.

It oversees portfolio design including its recent KiwiSaver funds, approaching $30 million.

Mr Drew said he was learning about the retail end of funds management, "very different" from his macro-strategy responsibility at the Super Fund.