“Put the school into business and start an endowment fund.” That, on Bruce Hales's own account, was the instruction that came out of a meeting in the early 1990s about how the Plymouth Brethren's school would pay for itself — recalled by the church's current leader, from the era of his father and predecessor, John S. Hales. Three decades later the church's own presentation names what it became: “Vision Foundation is our community endowment fund.” It is an Australian registered charity. It holds A$262 million. It benchmarks itself against Harvard, targets half a billion dollars at a 20% return, and sits at the top of a licensed New Zealand fund that takes Brethren families' savings and lends them to Brethren businesses.
The nest egg
Start with the church's own account of where this came from, because it is not a recent idea and it did not come from a finance department.
In a recording of the Global Funding Team presentation at Strive 23, held in late 2022, Bruce Hales takes the audience back to the early 1990s and a meeting about how the church's new school was going to pay for itself. He prefaces it by recalling how his father, John S. Hales — known within the church as JSH, and its leader until his death in 2002 — had introduced the idea:
“We'd paid for the buildings, but that's all debt-free. How are we going to keep going? What are we going to do to raise money for the expenses? We had two staff, but we knew we had to get more, and we were running it, honestly, very lean, extremely lean. And the two things he said were, that I clearly recall, was put the school into business and start an endowment fund.”
The church's leader of the day told them to put the school into business and start an endowment fund. Thirty years on, the same presentation states plainly what that endowment fund became:
“Vision Foundation is our community endowment fund.”
Bruce Hales describes the decision to restart it himself:
“We've been wanting to revive this concept of an endowment fund for quite some years. Finally, we decided that we'd waited long enough, because looking ahead, we know what the global economic cycle is… We know the tremendous uncertainties there are in the leading governments in the world, USA and UK, Germany, France.”
And the same event sets out what the fund is for, in the words of Jeremy Joyce:
“We have the responsibility of taking community funds and investing that in the best possible opportunities to generate the greatest returns with the lowest risk. So we use the funds in the Vision Foundation and we deploy them into great businesses with great management teams that have really good opportunity for growth. Some that many would know would be Legend Rubber Products in Canada… So far, we've deployed 42 million across nine businesses… a secure asset that will eventually come back to the ecosystem.”
Then the benchmark, and the target:
“Take the Harvard University, for instance. Their endowment fund, how is that performing?… Generally, the returns of some of those larger endowment funds range between six to 10%. We can see a path to do quite a bit better than that… if we could build a fund of scale where we had critical mass, let's take a number of $500 million. If we could do that and we could generate annual returns of, let's say, set ourselves a target of 20%, that would provide $100 million a year to the ecosystem.”
A charity benchmarking itself against Harvard's endowment, aiming at half a billion dollars and a 20% return, to throw off $100 million a year — stated to the membership of a church that told an Australian parliament it has no businesses and no vested interests.
The accumulation phase
The annual business events track its progress. At Strive 25, in November 2024:
“Strive 2024 we set a goal for Vision Foundation to grow the nest egg by 20% and we're thankful to say that this has been achieved ahead of time, driven by two key factors — firstly being that there was strong performance from the investments… and secondly is the generous donations from those who have recently sold businesses. Some businesses have donated up to 15% of the proceeds when they've sold, and for this we are incredibly thankful.”
And the plan for the following year:
“Now, as we look forward to 2025, we continue the accumulation phase, building out the foundation, and we're aiming to grow it by a further 15%. To achieve this we will be relying heavily on donations from successful business sales. To support these sales we've hired a team of professionals to work with business owners who are looking to sell within the next year or two and help them prepare for their exit and maximize the value of their sale. So if anyone is planning to sell, we would strongly recommend you reach out to Vision for a call with one of our professional advisers and we will do what we can to maximize the value you achieve.”
A year later, at Strive 26 in November 2025, Jeremy Joyce reported back:
“The Endowment Fund was set up to be able to make sure that we're not living hand to mouth, that there's a sustainable way forward. And we're very pleased to report that the returns have been consistently generating over 10% on the invested Endowment fund and the quantum has almost doubled over the last two and a half years… The very generous donations that have come, particularly from those that have sold businesses or had liquidity events of late. And we're now using these distributions to help fund our ecosystem.”
Read those as a charity's statement of strategy, because that is what they are. A registered Australian charity has a numerical growth target set at an annual event. It is in an “accumulation phase”, stated as such to its donors. Its funding model is donations of up to 15% of the proceeds when members sell their companies — and over the last few years Brethren-owned businesses have been sold to trade buyers and private equity in a steady sequence, among them Studco to JFE Shoji, Arrow County to Bunzl, and Astrak, Aquilam and Southgate to Inflexion, Klar Partners and Rutland Partners respectively. To increase that flow the Foundation employs corporate finance advisers whose job is to help members sell their businesses for more.
That is why the grants are nil. The money is not meant to go out. It is meant to compound, and the church has told its membership so.
What the membership is asked to give
The same recording contains Bruce Hales's own appeal, and it is worth reading because it sets the expectation against which every figure in this article should be read. He takes the story of Zacchaeus:
“He said to the Lord… half of my goods I give to the poor. He didn't lend to the poor. He didn't lend his goods to the poor. He gave to the poor, half. I think that's a principle we should follow as we're able for it, as we're equal to it. Half. [JSH] said, you've still got half left.”
Then the arithmetic, worked through for the audience:
“So if you've got a million bucks, you give half away, you've still got half a million. The next year, if you make half a million, you give a quarter away, after all the expenses and everything, you've still got a quarter. That's not too bad… Let's talk about $1,000. I've got $1,000 spare. Give $500 away, I've still got $500 left… Instead of buying $100 pairs, buy $50 pairs. Instead of buying $250 worth of sunglasses, I get them for $10. You'll pick the $500 up within about a month… It's the way of getting ahead, I'm promising you. If you practice it, you won't believe how you get ahead.”
That is the most senior elder of the church telling members what proportion of their money to give and what to spend the rest on, down to the price of a pair of shoes. Three weeks ago he told a parliamentary committee that his role is “giving spiritual guidance to members, so they can live by the principles of the Holy Bible”, and that it is not his role to direct what they do.
What follows is what the money does once it is given.
What it is
The Vision Income Fund is a registered managed investment scheme under New Zealand's Financial Markets Conduct Act — the same regulatory regime as a KiwiSaver fund or a retail bond. It is properly constituted. Its manager is FundRock NZ Limited. Its supervisor and custodian is Public Trust, a statutory body. Its administration is done by Adminis NZ, its loans serviced by Funding Partners, and its accounts audited by KPMG.
At 31 March 2026 it held net assets of NZ$148,191,275.
Its investment manager is Vision Invest Pty Ltd, of The Precinct, Level 6, 10 Herb Elliott Avenue, Sydney Olympic Park — the same building as the Universal Business Team, and the precinct the Australian Taxation Office searched in March 2024.
Who may invest
The Product Disclosure Statement is the document the law requires before anyone's money is taken. This one is dated 6 May 2025, and it says:
“The Fund is intended to provide members of the Brethren community (Community) with an investment product that suitably satisfies the Community's ethical requirements, as an alternative to other fixed income investments in the market.”
The minimum initial investment is $250, and $100 after that. This is not a vehicle for wealthy members. It is a savings product for ordinary families, and it competes directly with the bank: the fund's stated objective is to beat “the median 1 year gross term deposit rate paid by the registered New Zealand banks”.
Who gets the money
The Statement of Investment Policy and Objectives, filed with the regulator in April 2025, is equally direct:
“The Fund provides investors with exposure to loans predominantly made to Brethren Community (Community) businesses.”
“The Fund strategy is to make loans predominantly to businesses in the Community (supported by personal guarantees and general security agreements).”
At 31 March 2026 the loan book stood at $120,096,092 gross. During the year the fund advanced $52,061,680 of new loans. Credit quality is good: $749,458 was credit-impaired, an expected credit loss rate of 0.83%.
Loans run from a $100,000 minimum to as long as ten years, and exposure to any one borrower group is capped at 15% of the fund. The fund's own risk disclosures warn that returns depend on “the availability of suitable quality borrowers within the Community who are prepared to borrow”.
So the depositors and the borrowers are drawn from the same congregation, and the security is other members' homes and businesses.
The Residual
Here is the part that repays reading twice.
Investors do not receive what the fund earns. They receive a rate that somebody decides:
“The rate of monthly distribution per Unit is set by the Investment Manager and advised to us each month. That rate must be no less than the RBNZ Official Cash Rate at the beginning of that month, plus 0.45%.”
And whatever is left over does not stay with the investors:
“If the Fund's Net Income for that month is sufficient to make distributions at the Set Distribution Rate, then any remaining Net Income of the Fund for that month is paid to Vision Invest Trust.”
The scale of it is disclosed in the fees table. Total annual fund charges are 2.50% of net asset value. Of that figure, the PDS itemises:
“the Residual paid to Vision Invest Trust of 1.70% p.a.”
More than two thirds of what the fund charges is not the cost of running it. Everything else — FundRock's management fee, Vision Invest's investment management fee, Funding Partners' loan administration, Public Trust's supervision, custody, audit, registry, unit pricing — comes to roughly 0.8% between them. The remaining 1.70% is the spread, and it leaves.
On a fund of this size that is in the order of NZ$2.5 million a year.
They disclose the conflict themselves
To their credit, none of this is concealed. The Other Material Information document filed alongside the PDS sets out the problem in the regulator's own format, in a table of conflicts of interest:
The conflict: “The recipient of the Residual amount is a related entity to the Investment Manager, who sets the Set Distribution Rate at which investors receive their distributions each month.”
How it could influence decisions: “The Investment Manager may be influenced to set a lower rate than it otherwise would if it were not a related entity to the recipient so that the recipient receives a higher Residual amount. This may result in investors receiving a lower return.”
How it is managed: “The Governing Document sets a floor for the Set Distribution Rate… That floor is Official Cash Rate + 0.45%.”
In plain terms: the people who decide what Brethren families earn on their savings are related to the people who keep the difference, and the only thing standing between a member and a lower return is a floor of the cash rate plus 0.45%.
Where the spread ends up
The SIPO states it in one line: “Vision Invest is ultimately owned by Vision Foundation Limited.”
Vision Foundation is an Australian registered charity. Its special purpose financial report to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission for the year ended 30 June 2025 shows:
- Net assets of A$262,315,240 — up from $204,969,947 a year earlier and $122,996,260 two years before that
- Revenue of $59,384,613 and a surplus of $57,345,293
- Financial assets of $205,860,654, of which $162,263,820 is invested in related parties
- Grants to charities: nil
The previous year it gave $2,138,688 against a surplus of $81,973,687 — two and a half pence in the pound.
And the filings match the briefings. A$122,996,260, then A$204,969,947, then A$262,315,240 — a little more than a doubling, across exactly the period Jeremy Joyce said the nest egg had almost doubled. The 20% target set at Strive 24 was beaten: the Foundation's surplus of A$57.3 million on opening net assets of A$205 million is 28%, and the prior year's A$82 million surplus more again.
What a charity holding a quarter of a billion dollars actually spends
The Foundation's Annual Information Statement for the year to 30 June 2025, lodged with the regulator on 23 February 2026, puts its total revenue at A$44,120,389 and its total expenses at A$2,039,320. That is everything the charity spent in a year — grants, administration, salaries, the lot — against the money coming in. It spent 4.6 pence in the pound.
(The revenue figure in the Annual Information Statement and the A$59.4 million in the financial report are compiled on different bases and are not directly comparable. The expenses figure is the one that matters, and on either revenue measure the ratio is of the same order.)
The statement also describes what the Foundation did that year:
“Vision Foundation undertook a program of grantmaking including to a charity providing benevolent relief in pursuit of our purpose of supporting public welfare and to educational charities in support of our purpose of advancing education.”
A program of grantmaking, in a year whose financial report records grants to charities of nil, and in which total expenditure of every kind came to A$2.0 million. Those two accounts of the same twelve months are not easy to reconcile, and the Foundation is entitled to explain them. The register records the charity as operating in New South Wales only.
Who runs it, and what changed
The Foundation is registered as “The Trustee for Vision Foundation”, ABN 42 450 621 746, established 14 March 2017.
Until recently the contact details recorded against it on the regulator's own register were [email protected], with [email protected] as the address for service. Lance Nipper is a director of PBCC Services Pty Ltd — a New South Wales company at The Precinct, Sydney Olympic Park, whose twelve shares are owned in full by Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, ACN 158 542 075, the church entity itself. Its constitution gives its object as “providing administrative, financial and other support to a range of registered charitable entities” and “acting as trustee”. Among its other directors is Merrick Lloyd Grimshaw — the Lloyd Grimshaw who told the Australian parliament in August that the church “does not have any businesses”.
Those contact details have since been replaced. Both now read [email protected]. The ABN, the establishment date and the charity are unchanged; what the register used to show about who administers the Foundation, it no longer shows. We make no suggestion as to why the change was made.
Two dates on the register
The Foundation has filed late in four consecutive years. The 2022 statement was due 31 January 2023 and arrived on 1 June. The 2023 statement was due 31 January 2024 and arrived on 22 August. The 2024 statement was due 30 January 2025 and arrived on 1 July. The 2025 statement was due 31 January 2026 and arrived on 23 February.
And one filing is not late at all. The documents section of the Foundation's register entry records a new Governing Document lodged on 7 October 2026 — two days after Bruce Hales sent his written submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and nine days before he is due to appear before it.
So the chain runs: a family's savings → a licensed fund → loans to other members' businesses → the margin → Vision Invest Trust → a charity that in its last reported year took in A$44 million and spent A$2 million.
It used to have a different name
The scheme was registered on 17 April 2020. The New Zealand register records its previous name:
UBT INVEST NZ FUNDS — 17 April 2020 to 30 January 2023
The establishment deed still on file is titled SchemeEstablishmentDeed-UBTInvestNZFunds, signed 16 December 2019. And the filings name the party that set it up:
“On 5 December 2019, we and UBT Marketing Pty Limited (UBT) entered into a Fund Hosting Agreement formalising the framework within which FundRock was engaged by UBT to establish and manage the Scheme, with UBT being appointed as the investment manager and distributor of the Fund.”
UBT Marketing Pty Limited remained the investment manager until 31 March 2025, when Vision Invest replaced it.
UBT Marketing Pty Limited is also the company that owns and operates Connect — the worldwide directory of Plymouth Brethren members, holding each member's name, address, photograph, place of worship, family links and marriage connections, sold to members by subscription. The same company held the register of who the members are and the management of their savings.
Its address is The Precinct, Level 6, 10 Herb Elliott Avenue, Sydney Olympic Park.
The year the money left
One number in the audited accounts does not fit the pattern of growth.
The fund tripled between 2023 and 2025, from 98.5 million units to 196.0 million. Then, in the year to 31 March 2026, it fell to 149.2 million. Applications were $70,840,799. Redemptions were $116,461,313. Net assets dropped from $195.0m to $148.2m — a quarter of the fund, withdrawn in twelve months.
What the fund did next is instructive. Its liquid holdings — financial assets at fair value — fell from $73,678,864 to $15,439,851, sold down to meet the withdrawals. But the loan book grew, from $108.6m to $119.1m. The fund is now 77% loans to Community businesses, against 53% a year earlier.
Members took their savings out. The lending to members' businesses carried on, and the cushion absorbing the risk got thinner.
And in Australia
Vision Invest's own website, visioninvest.global, states its purpose in four words: “Established for the PBCC community.” It advertises “competitive rates”, “ethically sensitive security options” and “a range of terms to suit different needs”, gives Australian and New Zealand phone numbers, and puts its head office at the same Sydney Olympic Park address. Its documents sit behind a members-only login.
Its privacy policy names the operating entity as Vision Invest Pty Ltd as trustee for Vision Invest Trust, ABN 65 951 703 224, and says overseas disclosures may involve “the United States of America, United Kingdom and New Zealand”.
What this is, and what it is not
It is worth being precise, because the structure is more interesting than any accusation.
Nothing here suggests illegality. The fund is licensed. It has an independent manager, a statutory supervisor holding the assets in custody, a third-party loan administrator and a Big Four audit. Every term described above is disclosed in documents filed with the New Zealand regulator and published on a register anybody can search. The conflict over the Residual is declared by the manager itself. Investors are told what they are buying.
What it is is a savings-and-loan operated for the members of one church, in which the congregation supplies the deposits, the congregation's businesses take the loans, the members' own homes and firms provide the security, and the margin between what the money earns and what the savers are paid accrues to a charitable foundation that took in A$44 million and spent A$2 million in its last reported year.
In August, that church told a parliament there is no such thing as a Brethren business. In April, in a document lodged with a financial regulator, the same network described its fund as existing to lend to “Brethren Community businesses”.
Questions
- How many Plymouth Brethren members hold units in the Vision Income Fund, and what proportion of the membership is that?
- Are members encouraged, advised or expected to invest through the fund, and by whom?
- What sum has been paid to Vision Invest Trust as Residual since the fund began?
- What does Vision Invest Trust do with the Residual, and how much of it reaches Vision Foundation Limited?
- Vision Foundation holds A$262 million, reported revenue of A$44.1 million and total expenses of A$2.0 million in the year to 30 June 2025. What is its charitable purpose, and when does it intend to distribute?
- How long will the “accumulation phase” last, and what level of assets must the Foundation reach before it begins to distribute?
- Who are the professional advisers Vision employs to work with members selling their businesses, and are they paid by the Foundation?
- The Annual Information Statement for 2025 describes “a program of grantmaking”. What grants were made in that year, to whom, and in what amounts?
- Why were the Foundation's registered contact details changed from pbccservices.com to visionfoundation.global, and when?
- Why was a new governing document lodged with the charities regulator on 7 October 2026, and what does it change?
- Why did members withdraw $116 million from the fund in the year to 31 March 2026?
- Why was the fund's name changed from UBT Invest to Vision Invest in January 2023, and why was UBT Marketing replaced as investment manager in March 2025?
- Does any officer of the church have a role in deciding who may borrow from the fund, or on what terms?
How this was put together
Everything in this article comes from public registers. The Product Disclosure Statement (6 May 2025), the Other Material Information document (6 May 2025), the Statement of Investment Policy and Objectives (1 April 2025), the scheme establishment deed (16 December 2019), the annual reports and the audited financial statements to 31 March 2026 are all published on the New Zealand Disclose Register maintained by the Companies Office, scheme number SCH12865. The previous scheme name, UBT Invest NZ Funds, is recorded on that register.
Vision Foundation's net assets, revenue and surplus are from its Special Purpose Financial Report for the year ended 30 June 2025, filed with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. Its total revenue of A$44,120,389, total expenses of A$2,039,320, summary of activities, registered contact emails, filing dates and the governing document lodged on 7 October 2026 are as published on the ACNC charity register. The earlier pbccservices.com contact details are from an earlier state of that same register entry, held by us. PBCC Services Pty Ltd's ownership, constitution and directors are from its company extract at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, its constitution as adopted 1 July 2021, and its financial statements to 30 June 2022; that Merrick Lloyd Grimshaw and Lloyd Grimshaw are the same person is confirmed by Brethren Intelligence. Bruce Hales's account of the origin of the endowment fund, his appeal on giving, the statement that “Vision Foundation is our community endowment fund”, and Jeremy Joyce's description of the Foundation's investments, the Harvard benchmark and the $500 million and 20% targets are from a recording of the Global Funding Team presentation at Strive 23, the church's annual business and funding event, held in late 2022. Where the transcription of that recording is unclear we have omitted the passage rather than guess at it; the one exception is the abbreviation JSH, rendered phonetically in the transcript, which is John S. Hales, Bruce Hales's father and his predecessor as the church's leader, and which appears in square brackets. Jeremy Joyce's report on the Endowment Fund's returns is from a transcript of Strive 26, held in November 2025; the description of the Vision Foundation as the nest egg, the 20% and 15% growth targets, the accumulation phase and the advisory team are from a transcript of Strive 25, held in November 2024. The business sales named are from our own directory and filed accounts. The description of Vision Foundation's investment targets comes from a recording of a Global Funding Team meeting. The ownership and address of the Connect directory are from the Global Privacy Notice for the Connect Services published by UBT, and from the app's listing on the Google Play Store. Lloyd Grimshaw's evidence is from the official transcript of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, 21 August 2026.
We make no allegation of unlawful conduct by Vision Invest Pty Ltd, Vision Foundation Limited, UBT Marketing Pty Limited, FundRock NZ Limited, Public Trust, Funding Partners, Adminis or KPMG. FundRock, Public Trust, Adminis, Funding Partners and KPMG are independent service providers to the scheme and this article makes no criticism of any of them.
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