The Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation
The Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation (the Guardians), which manages the NZ Super Fund, invests in a range of government securities across Asia, Europe and America. Guardians collaborated with Bloomberg to adopt a new version of Rule Builder (RBLD) that incorporated timed release and order rerun capabilities. This ensured trades could be executed across time zones at specific times with a high degree of confidence.
“
We have better execution and also increased transparency of the market. Now we are able to collect the data, which gives us more confidence in the integrity of the price we achieved, and it’s much easier to work out who is better at doing what at what time.
Bob Xia, Portfolio Manager, NZ Super Fund
Situation
The Guardians trade global sovereign bonds via independent brokers, however manual workflows were impacting both productivity and performance. The fund manager was looking for an automated solution to support trading across time zones and to optimize execution.
Crown entity charged with managing the NZ Super Fund
Investing government contributions — and returns generated from these investments — to grow the size of the NZ Super Fund over time
Looking for an automated solution to support trading across time zones and to optimize execution
Problem
The Guardians’ NZ Super Fund follows a simple optimization methodology, targeting multiple duration buckets of bonds across 20 countries. However, this approach resulted in more than 150 individual bond trades executed each time, which became complex when using manual workflows in a time sensitive trading process.
Manual workflows impacting both productivity and performance
New mandate introduces increased capital and investment needs
Solution
Bloomberg worked with the Guardians to create a tool that would fit its specific needs, which they beta tested for a few months in parallel to their existing methodology.
This worked well to ensure an optimized workflow as the new tool was introduced broadly in early 2023.
Timed release function and order rerun feature
Ensures trades are executed across time zones
Global support team provides insightful solutions, available 24/7
“
We used to have to give our trader at least one day’s notice to trade. Now it’s a snap decision.
Bob Xia, Portfolio Manager, NZ Super Fund
Benefits
More opportunities to refine trading strategies
Increased access to liquidity
Capability to move away from the constraints of their original trading model