Trust Services

Appointment Types

In our role as the Māori Trustee, we manage land and assets for Māori landowners throughout New Zealand and we ensure accountability and oversight for 1,858 trusts and entities. 

Trusts under administration

Number and Value of Distributions Made by appointment types

This year, we administered the distribution of $7.96 million on behalf of 531 of these entities (2016 $8.01 million on behalf of 585 entities). These distributions are either paid out to owners if we hold current bank account information or retained in the owner account.

Distributions by year

In our role as the Māori Trustee, we make payments to owners where the Responsible Trustees have decided to distribute funds to owners rather than keeping monies for future investment in trust assets. This year, we made 20,120 (2016 20,740) individual payments totalling $6.95 million (2016 $6.6 million), either directly to the individual accounts of owners or by transfer to pūtea accounts. Trust distribution payments to owners are normally made in the middle two quarters of the year, but some trusts also distribute at other times.

An important priority for us is the ongoing maintenance of current bank information to ensure effective distribution to owners. This year, 597 (2016 687) payments with a value of $114,000 (2016 140,000) were rejected because of incorrect bank account information we hold.

Payments made to owners

Entity Actions

We’ve continued to make good progress across our portfolio. We held 467 meetings of owners, completed 225 trust reviews and coordinated 240 meetings of trustees (2016 464 meetings of owners, 234 trust reviews, 248 meetings of trustees).

Although we were slightly below our target for meetings of owners and trust reviews, we held significantly more meetings of trustees. This shows an increasing desire for governance structures that work for owners.

Our annual client satisfaction survey focuses on our three main client contact points: meetings of owners, enquiries, and through My Whenua.

Nearly 80 percent of owners surveyed, who had attended a meeting during the year, said it was useful and 99 percent said they would attend meetings in the future.

To increase participation and engagement, we continued our pilot to develop electronic meetings of owners. We’re increasing access to information for owners unable to travel to meetings and encouraging questions in advance of the meetings, so we can cover topics that are relevant to them. Following a successful scoping project, we held trials of the electronic meetings with 21 entities. The pilot of electronic meetings ran alongside face-to-face meetings with owners in Gisborne and Hawera. Of the 61 owners who participated online, 21 had never attended a meeting before. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. 

Compliance actions completed and services delivered

This year, we started advertising meetings of owners through Facebook, in order to reach more of our owners. In the first two months, we advertised
97 meetings and the posts were clicked on by 1,417 people. This approach to inviting owners to meetings has been well received, with whānau sharing meetings with each other as well as on iwi and group pages.

Over the summer, we ran a viral online campaign with television presenter Sonny Ngatai. Your Whakapapa Your Whenua aimed to get younger Māori interested in Māori land. The campaign was a huge success. It encouraged people to find out about succession and to support their whānau to talk about their land, update their contact details and search for their land online. The campaign video was viewed 35,665 times on YouTube. On Facebook, we reached 88,874 people, 1,209 people commented, shared or reacted to our campaign, and 5,429 people clicked through to find out more information. 

My Whenua

We completed the launch of My Whenua sites and have developed a roadmap to increase registered users and ensure that content on the service is relevant to owners. My Whenua gives owners more access to information than ever before and, with 1,368 sites now live and 3,246 owners signed up to the service, it’s on its way to being the main channel for owners to access information about their whenua.

The most popular pages on My Whenua are the owner lists, reports to owners, meeting minutes and the image gallery. My Whenua comes highly recommended, with over 70 percent of users saying they recommend the service to friends and whānau.

My Whenua live sites and registered users