Booster is an independent financial services company based in Wellington, offering a suite of socially responsible investment funds for KiwiSaver, SuperScheme and Investment clients.
Part of their unique proposition, Booster also invests back into New Zealand through their specialist investment funds Tahi, Private Land and Property (PLPF) and NZ Innovation Booster – a partnership with Wellington UniVentures and Otago Innovation Ltd to provide investment funding to commercialise research innovations.
Booster’s Managing Director, Allan Yeo, formed Booster Financial Services in 1998, to provide New Zealanders with a financial services company that was locally owned and true to Kiwi values. In founding the business, Allan brought with him over 20 years’ experience in management, trading and investment. The company’s links to Victoria University of Wellington reach back to Allan’s time there as a student, during which time he gained a first-class honours degree in economics.
Booster has an experienced leadership and management team, including their exceptionally experienced Executive Chairman, Paul Foley, who is also a graduate of Victoria University of Wellington.
The investment team are active managers who utilise a mixture of active and passive management, market index funds and index replication as their core investment strategies:
- Top-down analysis and decision making is favoured over individual security selections and market timing. This includes comprehensive asset class correlation analysis to ensure effective diversification and risk management.
- Where appropriate portfolios of directly held securities are held in favour of index funds as a more cost-effective way of implementing their strategies, particularly where these can be used to readily replicate a benchmark index. This can also facilitate greater control over the overall portfolio returns, minimises unintended overlapping risks with index funds and provide greater control over taxable outcomes.
- Asset managers are used only where they can demonstrate a capacity to manage more specific strategies aimed at materially outperforming index funds after fees. They include Zurich based Rothschild Bank, California based Fisher Investments, and London based Intermede Investment Partners.
- Alongside these specialist managers, Booster allocate a portion of global shares to active in-house positions. Booster aim to invest in sectors with favourable outlooks best positioned to outperform the prevailing economic environment.
- Periods of market breakdown require dynamic asset allocation and downside risk management strategies.
The investment team consider environmental, social and governance risks when assessing investments across all their core KiwiSaver and investment funds. Additionally, Booster’s socially responsible investment funds are independently certified by the Responsible Investment Association Australasian (RIAA). Their offering includes some of the most socially responsible KiwiSaver funds as recognised by Mindful Money.
This is an investment approach utilising a mix of active and passive management, that many New Zealanders should be comfortable with, centred around diversification and direct ownership of assets but also utilising market index funds, asset managers and risk management strategies where appropriate.