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- Buying your first home, next home, investing in property or just keen to review your mortgage?
- Apply online
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- Information for Clients
- Contact the Home Loans team
- Put your savings to work
- Earn better returns and access your money with no penalties.
- Start investing now
Investing has never been easier with Squirrel's Monthly Income Fund
Earn a regular income from your investments paid to you or automatically reinvested every month.
Sign up with InvestNow
Plenty of reasons to invest
- Income paid or reinvested each month
- Invest in a diversified portfolio of loans predominantly backed by residential property
- Reserve Funds to help protect against missed repayments
- Get your money out at no cost with a 30 day notice period
- Low Funds Management Fee
Keen to see how the Fund is performing? Check out the latest reporting here.
For the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund Product Disclosure Statement, click here.
Squirrel investors have never had a missed payment to date, and we intend to keep it that way.*
A regular, monthly income
You can have your distributions paid back to your account, or automatically reinvested each month.
Lowered risk with our unique Reserve Funds
We have Reserve Funds which help protect against missed borrower repayments, provided there are sufficient funds available.
The power to get your money out
The notice period is just 30 days, and it won't cost a thing to get your money out.
A diversified portfolio, backed by residential property
Invest in loans that are predominantly secured by first mortgages.
How does Squirrel's Monthly Income Fund work?
Rather than investing directly into Squirrel's market place and managing it yourself, you can invest into the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund.
FundRock2 is the issuer and fund manager and Squirrel is the investment manager of the Fund. FundRock provides fund hosting services to some of the largest fund managers in the world.
InvestNow
The best way to access the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund is by heading to InvestNow and investing through their online platform.
InvestNow is a New Zealand-based investment platform that provides online access to KiwiSaver, Managed Funds and Term Deposits from leading fund managers and banks from around the world.
Features of the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund at a glance:
|
Investment Objective |
The Fund’s investment objective is to provide an annual return, after fees and before tax, that outperforms the 1 Year New Term Deposit Rate (>$10k) by a margin of 2.00%. |
|
Income |
Distributions are made once a month and can be paid to your bank account or reinvested. |
|
Fees |
2.00% p.a. incl GST and management fee. This includes the service margin deducted by Squirrel at the platform level. |
|
Tax |
PIE Tax (Portfolio Investment Entity) |
|
Withdrawals |
30 days notice, no withdrawal fee |
|
Invests in |
Loans to homeowners credit assessed and managed by Squirrel. |
We publish monthly reports on our performance, which you can view here.
Investing into the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund is easy and 100% online.
First, have a read of our product disclosure statement. Then head over to InvestNow where you can open an account and find the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund to invest into.
Home loans
Returns: 7.00%p.a.
Risk rating: 2
Security: First mortgages over residential property.
Who you're lending to: Homeowners and occasionally property investors with at least 20% equity. These borrowers seldom default. When it comes to risk vs return, it doesn't get much better.
Construction Loans
Returns: 7.50%p.a.
Risk rating: 3
Security: First mortgages over residential property.
Who you're lending to: Seasoned property gurus seeking funding for residential construction, but definitely no cowboy developers. The maximum loan amount is $2 million for smaller, lower risk projects. Because borrowers aren't owner-occupiers of these homes they're more exposed to market conditions.
Personal Loans
Returns: 7.75%p.a.
Risk rating: 5
Security: Residential property for loans above $20k
Who you're lending to: Homeowners. They might be planning home renos, buying a Tiny Home up to $100k or aspiring first home buyers using a Launchpad first home loan as part of their 20% deposit up to $120,000. These loans offer better returns, but have a lower level of security. To offset that, we put more aside into our reserves to cover any borrower defaults.
Your investments are managed by the Squirrel team, and we're no spring chickens
Squirrel began as mortgage brokers in 2008. Since then we've arranged over $11 billion of mortgages, so it's fair to say we know property inside out.
In 2015, our peer-to-peer lending platform was born
We decided there must be a better way for Kiwis to borrow, as well as earn better returns on investments in a low interest rate world, so peer-to-peer lending was a natural next step for us.
We only lend to homeowners, the market we know inside out, and we lend to market niches that are under served by banks. This means investors can earn an attractive return for the credit risk.
Find out more about the history of Squirrel
It's all about creating a regular income, without doing the work.
When you invest using the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund, you can sit back and leave the work to us. We lend only to homeowners and do our due diligence on every borrower that applies for a loan. We ensure they're creditworthy and that it's responsible to lend them money, and on top of that the Reserve Funds are there to help protect against any missed borrower payments.
Just watch your income roll in. And whenever you decide to get your money out, all you need to do is provide 30 days notice.
How does my investment work?
The Squirrel Monthly Income Fund is all about creating a regular income stream for you. We do this by investing into loans to New Zealand homeowners. The interest they pay on those loans creates the return for you. A small margin goes to Squirrel and in most cases a small amount goes towards the Reserve Funds.
The distributions will be paid on or around the 10th business day of each month, and you can choose to have this paid directly to your bank account or reinvested into the Fund.
How does my investment get taxed?
With this type of investment you'll pay PIE (Portfolio Investment Entity) based tax on your returns. The benefit of PIE tax is you can end up paying less tax on your returns compared with paying Resident Withholding tax. Most people have a Prescribed Investor Rate (PIR) of 10.5%, 17.5% or a maximum of 28% tax, under the PIE tax structure. To find out your PIR, head to the IRD website.
What's the difference between investing through the Squirrel Monthly Income Fund and investing directly with Squirrel?
The Squirrel Monthly Income Fund has a hands-off approach where you can 'set and forget' by letting Squirrel do the work of investing in various types of loans for you. You pay a fee of 1.70%p.a. (incl GST) for this service (including the service margin deducted by Squirrel at the platform level) and your monthly distributions are automatically paid straight into your bank account like any other income (or reinvested into the fund if that's what you prefer).
Investing directly into the Squirrel market place means you create your account with Squirrel and manage your own investment, choosing your preferred risk and returns. This option puts you in the driver's seat and there is no management fee because you're managing it yourself. Your investment still generates a regular return which gets paid into your Squirrel account so it's up to you whether to withdraw it into your bank account or reinvest into the marketplace. Find out more about investing directly with Squirrel here.
How is the risk managed?
Squirrel is the only lender in New Zealand to use a Reserve Fund model, which is there to help manage risk for investors. How it works is a portion of the interest paid by the borrower is deposited into the Reserve Fund, and there is a separate Reserve Fund for each loan type. The Reserve Funds are sitting inside a separate trust that aims to protect investors against any missed payments.
No Squirrel investor has had a missed payment to date*, and our intention is to keep it that way. You can find out more about how we manage risk here, and view our past performance here.
*While no investor has lost a cent through Squirrel, past performance cannot guarantee the future.
1 InvestNow Service: InvestNow holds a Financial Advice Provider Transitional Licence. InvestNow’s focus is on helping people and providing information, based upon understanding their objectives and level of knowledge.
2 FundRock: FundRock is the issuer and manager of the Squirrel Monthly Fund Income. For a Product Disclosure Statement please visit fundrock.com/fundrock-new-zealand or disclose-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Investors are encouraged to seek independent financial advice.
