Staying in New Zealand, Fletcher Building advised on Monday that it had closed its NZ$100 million capital note issue, launched in November, on the Friday before. The issue was oversubscribed to the extent of the company being able to issue NZ$131 million of capital notes, although it had stood ready to accept oversubscriptions to NZ$200 million.The capital notes were issued in two tranches, with NZ$112 million being sold with a May 2014 maturity and the balance having a May 2016 maturity. Both tranches of the subordinated notes will pay a 9 per cent coupon.Fletcher Building advised that 80 per cent of the notes were sold to retail investors.The largest single pool of long-term savings is being ignored.The key reason New Zealand has such a successful retail bond market is that savings in the country are not institutionalised. Until recently, New Zealand did not have a compulsory superannuation system and even under the system that exists now employees can choose to opt out.New Zealanders have made their own arrangements to save for their retirement and for those savings to be tapped it is necessary to have a retail bond market.Of course Australia, with a compulsory superannuation system that has been in place since 1992, has institutionalised savings. Aggregated superannuation funds are put in the hands of professional managers to manage, and therefore it is the institutions that are approached to tap those savings.So Australia has a wholesale bond market but not a retail market. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fact that of Australia's $1.15 trillion of superannuation assets, just over 30 per cent, or $348 billion, are held in self-managed superannuation funds. This is from APRA data to September 30, 2008. Self-managed superannuation funds are now the largest fund type, coming in just ahead of retail funds, with assets totalling $332 billion at the end of September. And guess who runs self-managed superannuation funds - mums and dads - retail investors.Self-managed superannuation funds, with very few exceptions, do not have access to wholesale markets and therefore do not hold bonds. The asset allocation of these entities is heavily skewed towards equities, property and cash, allocations that are less than appropriate in the current environment and one that many SMSF managers would change, if they could.Corporate treasurers and CFOs of investment grade companies, who are having difficulties rolling over or raising debt, should ask themselves, and more importantly their advisers, why they are not tapping the largest single pool of savings in Australia that is available for long-term investment.