About Our Ethical Mandate
We believe that the AAOIFI standards promote investments which seek to consider both financial return and social good. We believe Amanah KiwiSaver Plan advances a strong ethical statement and makes it an appropriate investment vehicle not only for persons who abide by similar religious principles, but also for those who ethically value these investment ideals.
Our Ethical Mandate is as follows:
Equity Investments
Our Ethical Mandate means that all equity investments by AmanahNZ must be in companies with strong balance sheets showing:
Interest-bearing debt less than 30%
Interest-bearing investments less than 30%
And illiquid assets greater than 33% (i.e. there are assets making or doing something for the good of man kind that exceed 67% of total assets).
Explanation: a company must have low-debt and highasset ratios, with a strong balance sheet, often referred to as “Blue Chip” stock.
All investments are prohibited from the following activities:
Money lending (i.e. this includes all financial institutions e.g. Banks lend money using interest based concepts)
Gambling and speculative investments (this excludes high-risk investment products)
Derivatives (i.e. a high-risk product that, in our opinion, is considered unethical gambling)
Alcohol, Tobacco , Weapons of war, Adult entertainment
Pork • Leverage (i.e. borrowing against investors (your) money, not assets)
Explanation of leverage: Leverage is a practice of many fund managers. In our opinion, leverage puts your investment at an unethical risk. We strongly disagree with the use of leverage.
Additionally, hedging instruments cannot be used to manage currency risk as they are derivatives and therefore are prohibited by the Ethical Mandate.
Cash: No interest is received for assets held in the Scheme’s bank accounts, as the Manager has elected that these bank accounts are non-interest bearing.