© Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation
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A key partner to the rest of the organisation, the Legal team provides legal direction in the context of a deep understanding of the Guardians and Fund, its risk appetite, and its objectives. The team’s work is broad, cross-border and complex, advising on all legal matters impacting our operations; keeping ahead of the global regulatory landscape and how that impacts the mandates we manage and preparing, reviewing and negotiating all contracts and legal documents on our behalf.
We understand the importance of a strong reputation and healthy stakeholder relationships to achieving our investment and organisational objectives. Our Communications team has a key role in ensuring we maintain the trust and confidence of our stakeholders through a commitment to transparent, timely and accurate communication. We also have a strong focus on internal communication.
The Internal Audit function is an independent objective assurance and advisory activity. Our team works closely with the Board and Leadership Team to help the Guardians achieve its objectives by evaluating and improving the effectiveness of our governance, risk management and internal control processes across all areas of the business.
The Direct Investments team leads the origination, review and execution of our direct investment opportunities, as well as the management and governance of these investments post-completion. We are also responsible for managing our New Zealand active equities portfolio.
The Asset Allocation team at the Guardians is the unifying force behind our investment decision-making; providing robust investment risk measurement and management. The team supports the NZ Super Fund’s Reference Portfolio, as well as the risk capital allocation (risk budgeting) across the active investment strategies that make up its Actual Portfolio. The team includes the Economics, Data Analytics and Portfolio Design functions.
A significant portion of the NZ Super Fund, and all of the Elevate Fund, is invested by external fund managers on our behalf. The External Investments and Partnerships team works with investment and asset managers around the world, representing a wide variety of investments, listed and unlisted. Selecting these managers and monitoring their performance is a key part of the team’s work. The team is also responsible for coordinating our relationships with global peers.
The Sustainable Investment team is charged with supporting and upskilling the investments team to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and expertise necessary to consider the material Environmental, Social and Governance risks on our portfolio (like climate change) along with the impact of our investments on the long-term wellbeing of society, the environment and the real economy while continuing to deliver strong commercial returns.
The Strategic Tilting team is primarily responsible for managing and executing the New Zealand Superannuation Fund’s active, internally-managed strategic tilting strategy. This strategy reflects the Fund’s endowments and investment belief, and alters the Fund’s exposure to broad markets and currencies (such as global equities, rates, commodities and credit). It is a long-horizon, value-based strategy with a very disciplined and systematic investment approach.
The Data Analytics team works directly with and supports investment data users across the organisation, ensuring that solutions are business led, meet the needs of users and are aligned with enterprise technology and agreed standards. The function brings together data consumers, Data Technology and Services teams and our Technology business unit. The team develops analytical solutions that support investment excellence, create efficiencies, and mitigate risk.
People sit at the heart of everything we do at the Guardians. The People and Culture team designs strategies and practices to attract, retain, develop, and motivate our diverse and talented workforce. Underpinning all of this, the People and Culture team places a strong emphasis on enabling a constructive values-driven culture, and a flexible, inclusive environment in which all team members can thrive. People and Culture has three teams:
We look to leverage the NZ Super Fund's sovereign status and strong implied credit rating, together with the fact that it is a long-term fund with a known liquidity profile, to gain access to different kinds of funding opportunities. The Portfolio Investments team, responsible for executing these opportunities, runs a number of active mandates: active collateral, direct arbitrage, opportunistic volatility and dividend derivative futures.
Established in 2009, the Portfolio Completion (Treasury) team has expanded rapidly to become a key driver of value at the Guardians. The team works to achieve efficiencies in the management of our passive exposures. In recent years the team’s activities have expanded beyond traditional treasury management, looking to add value using a range of investment strategies.
Risk is an integral part of how we operate at the Guardians. We take investment risk in order to achieve our mission, while also managing other complex non-investment risks. Our Risk team measures and monitors the portfolio, enterprise and compliance risk areas of the organisation to improve decision making through independent review.
The Data Services team’s primary purpose is to ensure that Guardians team members have confidence and trust in its investment data and investment reporting. The function supports the business to achieve its strategic data objectives by helping shape the data standards, principles, and data production process support required, to in turn enable efficient and effective investment decision making and risk management. This function also plays a crucial role in managing the Guardians’ relationships with its data partners and providers, as well as internal data consumers ensuring that they are supported in obtaining the data they require, with the right quality controls and performance measures.
The Finance team is responsible for all aspects of accounting, budgeting and financial reporting at the Guardians, working closely with a broad range of other areas and levels of the organisation. The team also co-ordinates funding, de-funding and valuation of the NZ Super Fund’s unlisted investments and plays a central role in the design and maintenance of our control environment. The facilities management and reception roles also fall within the Finance team.
The Tax team is committed to best practice, openness and transparency. The Guardians' two mandates are subject to tax on their respective worldwide income. The New Zealand Superannuation Fund is one of the largest taxpayers in New Zealand. Investing both mandates in a tax efficient manner is an important consideration for our Tax team which is also responsible for the management of our tax obligations.
The Investment Operations team provides trade lifecycle support for all of our internal investment activity as well as the controls and oversight required for the effective administration of the Fund's externally managed mandates. The team is also responsible for the management of our key service provider relationships, including our global custodian.
The Strategy team sets our strategic agenda, working across teams to envisage where we want to be in the medium and longer-term to achieve our mission and vision, and how we plan to get there (our shorter-term priorities). The team also leads innovation and knowledge management projects, and delivers special projects as required, including project managing global benchmarking initiatives and external reviews of the Guardians.
Empowering the Guardians to make the best decisions based on reliable information, the Data Technology team is responsible for our investment-related data and technology services. We deliver the tools and data required to ensure that our investment-related data can be trusted, understood and traced, while creating and maintaining high quality decision support tools.
Our investment activity depends on robust, high quality IT platform. Our Technology Services Team oversees all the systems, infrastructure and data in place at the Guardians. All systems are now working in a cloud environment and we have a “Cloud first” policy. This ensures that we have the infrastructure in place to provide the scale, security and business continuity solution to deliver the capabilities required for our investment activity.
The Business Solutions Group (BSG) is responsible for partnering with the business to understand and prioritise the business problems that can be solved by technology. We collaborate closely with the business to define and deliver the initiatives that support our business and strategic goals. We also manage a network of external professional relationships to supplement our delivery practices. We are experts in project and programme management, business analysis, change management and relationship management.
The Information Security team is responsible for the design, implementation and maintenance of an information security program that protects the confidentiality, integrity and availability of Guardians' technology and information assets. Our Information Security team is committed to engaging both the internal business stakeholders and, the wider security community to establish an appropriate information security governance structure that encourages and enables collaboration and support for new initiatives.
The Guardians is committed to fostering a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued, supported and empowered. People who work at the Guardians are comfortable challenging attitudes, ideas and actions. We also openly discuss and learn from mistakes.
When our people are at their best, we’re at our best. At the Guardians you can trust we will invest in your wellbeing so you can thrive personally. We are proud to have been awarded the DVFREE Tick from SHINE, which is a mark of confidence that we take meaningful steps to create a workplace free of family violence.
