KiwiSaver

A new fund finder tool is designed to offer a more user-friendly way for people to compare their KiwiSaver options.

Hugo Kidd is developing Find My Fund to offer a comparison of fund performance after fees.

He said the idea came about when he was studying his Level 5 qualification investment strand.

“I kind of came to the realisation that a lot of people are worse off with their retirement at the moment… people in the wrong fund types or wrong actual fund itself.

“Searching online, I couldn’t really find a platform that can first of all be independent and also just user-friendly to track all the KiwiSaver funds.”

He said the tool would act as a sort of leaderboard to see how funds were performing over various time periods and against their category average.

“I've done a proven performer [measure], which is a time period, but then against their fund type, and then the average or the category average. And then has that fund hit the category average every year?… Then the category average over five years, and then the fund's performance over the five years, and it can show the difference. And it’s something quite staggering, really, because it could be, 30%, and then this one's 60%.

“So, it's really important for people to talk to an adviser or provider and make those changes, make sure they're in the right funds, because it does add up over the long term.”

He said people were often not getting enough financial advice around their decisions.

“People in New Zealand don’t really get financial advice and there isn’t really an advisory hub where people can go and search for advisers and filter it out… that’s another component to the platform. Then another main part of the business is just providing content through social media and marketing to make Kiwis take action, essentially, with KiwiSaver.”

He said advisers had a role to play in KiwiSaver providing consistent advice. “People get advisers so they can have that human touch… I’ve got an adviser and I like it because I can text or call them any time. It’s the same person instead of if you’re with a provider – unless you’re with an adviser from the provider – you’re just talking to someone new every time… it’s just having that personal touch and reassurance.”

He said he had been building the platform alongside his full-time job and hoped to have it ready to take to market in a month or so.

Kidd said he planned to expand it into managed funds beyond KiwiSaver in future.

New data from the Retirement Commission shows balances have increased year-on-year, but some people are still being left behind.

The data shows the average balance across KiwiSaver was $41,286 in 2025, up 11.3% on the year before.

Men’s average balance was $47,452 and women’s $38,212.

About a third of members had balances below $10,000 but the number of people with balances above $80,000 was growing, to about 15%.
People who were contributing had much higher average balances than non-contributing members.

Policy lead Michelle Reyers said the gender pay gap was a concern and something that the Retirement Commission wanted to see addressed, with more support for people who were on parental leave.

The largest gender pay gap was among people aged 51 to 65.

The research noted that 90% of those earning $50,000 a year or more were contributing, so low balances were most likely to be held by people who were low-income, working part-time or not in work at all.

Reyers said it would also be more effective to target government contribution, currently $260 a year, to low-income earners, for whom it would make the greatest difference.

Edward Glennie, of Genesis Advice, said making KiwiSaver compulsory or offering tax incentives would help to lift average balances.

“I see so many clients who don't contribute – possibly because they can't afford it or it’s too easy to opt out.

“It’s topical now with all the chat about NZ Super – but if that was pushed back to 67 or means tested I'm sure it would be a catalyst to get people to consider saving more. [A balance of] less than $10,000 is not going to last long.

“The other big thing is people are not taking enough risk – they are in a conservative or default fund and don't realise the opportunity cost of staying in it and missing out on compounding until they get to 65. It’s why there's value in having advice.”

New Zealanders may be underestimating how much they need to save for retirement – and calculators that tell different stories aren’t helping, one consultant says.

Peter Urbani, from KnowRisk Consulting, has been looking at the retirement projection calculators offered by KiwiSaver providers and other institutions, and said they differed significantly.

“If you put the same inputs into 13 different KiwiSaver calculators ranging from Sorted to the banks and asset managers you get 14 different results.”

Using the example of a 35-year-old earning $75,000 a year with a current balance of $15,000 and contributions of 3.5%, calculators said they were on track to receive anything from just under $250,000 via the Financial Markets Authority through to $276,651 by Sorted’s calculation.

“The tools I build for people to use, they don’t give advice but I do try and get them right,” Urbani said.

“I was just having a look and I did notice there was a big disparity… obviously there’s a critical need because New Zealand started so much later than Australia, there’s a funding gap that’s quite far behind so it really comes down to what contribution rate is necessary and what, if anything, the government does to make it more urgent.”

He said a few calculators had not updated their NZ Super tables from 2025 to 2026 values. Some were using different PIRs and a couple were using non-standard fund return expectations, he said.

But people needed a clear picture to be able to plan how much more they would have to contribute to get to their desired outcomes.

“With current balances at around $10,000 median …and current average age 40, contribution rates are going to have to rise to around 18% for everyone to be able to retire comfortably and not outlive their money.”

He said the “straight line” method used by the calculators to show an investor’s likely experience was inadequate.

“To keep it simple they show the one line where you have accumulation and decumulation.

“That’s fine from a simplicity point of view but the problem is that the input assumptions, which they don't even show on the calculators …they've got specific fund return expectations and also implicitly volatility and things like that, all of which change dynamically per fund and per year.

“So that straight line is going to be a wriggly line and because it wriggles, some people are going to get the top line and some people are going to get the bottom line, depending on when they enter.

“And the range between those two is what really matters, because if you want to be very sure you're not going to outlive your money, you want to look at one of those lower confidence bands … let's say it gets you to $500,000, which is probably a generous number for New Zealand, there's some people who are going to be getting less than half of that and some people are going to be getting not quite twice, but sort of $700,000-odd. So, if a lot of people are getting less than half of that, obviously, they're going to outlive their money.”

He said the Government should take some policy decisions to encourage more people to save, whether that was tax breaks or credits, or other measures.

“It's got to come from somewhere. Otherwise, people have to start cutting back on the retirement age, which I think is going to happen anyway… The real thing is to get total contribution rates up.

“If you start saving immediately in your first job and you put away 10 percent from age 20, 25, you really don't have to worry about it.

But the reality is nobody has that discipline and life gets in the way… everybody starts later than they should. And the effect of starting later is the slope of the line to where you want to get to gets steeper.

“So it's really about getting those balances right. The sad reality is 90 percent of people are not going to be able to retire comfortably because of the skewness of income distribution in the country. And that's a universal thing.

“So basically if you think about it, ‘I want X amount’ and you're probably going to miss it, but let's say that's your target. If you're at 80% of that target, you're generally in pretty good shape. But once you're unfunded, it becomes harder and harder to make up that gap.

“You either have to cut your cloth for your circumstances… or you increase your contributions while you still have time.”

Financial advisers need to remember that value-for-money is an ongoing expectation in KiwiSaver, one financial advice technology specialist says, not something that can be dealt with once and ticked off.

Rajat Vats, founder of Nuvano, noted there was a wide range of fees being charged by KiwiSaver providers, from under 30 basis points at Simplicity and Kernel through to more than 1.3 percent at NZ Funds and AE KiwiSaver.

He said the average excess return compared to benchmark across funds with 10 years of data to report was -1.42 percent.

But on an absolute return basis, eight of the to 10 performers over 10 years were active managers, including OneAnswer,  QuayStreet and SuperLife funds.

“Most of the funds are actually not really even beating their benchmarks. But you have to then look at the further nuance … some fund managers would use indexes as their benchmark. Some fund managers would create their own composite benchmarks. And some don't really have benchmarks.

“Benchmarks don’t really take into perspective  tax and fees. So benchmarks are getting a head start in advance. it's really hard to beat the benchmark.’

He said the absolute return data showed that some active products had earned their fee over a full market cycle.

“The benchmark-relative data shows that most have not matched the public index on a gross-of-fees basis. A member in an active fund that both sits in the absolute-return top 10 and comes close to matching its benchmark net of its fee has a defensible placement. A member in a 1.20 percent fund that trails its benchmark by more than its fee does not.”

He said advisers should be encouraging clients to take a long-term view.  “People should be looking at that perspective instead of, oh, one year, the fund goes down… it was disclosed in advance that this is a longer duration fund, and there can be volatility, and don't panic.

“That’s the job of financial advisers to convey to the market, don't panic.”
He said wraps adder another layer of complexity.

“The wraps that deserve scrutiny are the ones that repackage a manager the member could already access directly, at a higher fee than the direct version.

“The question for an adviser is simple: is the wrap layer delivering something the member could not get by placing with the underlying manager directly? If the answer is ‘better reporting’ or ‘platform access,’ the 20-to-40 basis-point premium might be earned. If the answer is ‘none of the above,’ a direct placement is usually the cleaner choice.”

Adviser should think about the fee competitiveness of the funds they placed clients in, he said. They should also check what the impact of a wrap was.

“If an adviser is recommending Milford to one person directly the fee is going to be minimal… 1.05 percent if you go direct, if you go through the same fund though a wrap platform you’ll pay 1.25 percent. If you go to another fund, you’ll be paying 1.49 percent.
“A 1 percent fee difference can make up to $100,000 difference over 30 years…. The illusion that’s being sold there… is we diversify your KiwiSaver into multiple funds.

“But funds in themselves are diversified vehicles… in general they are very diversified. The narrative of wrap platforms is we will diversify your KiwiSaver across multiple managers…[but] then you are paying extra fees, you are double charging, double dipping, as well as you're paying wrap platform fees, which is more harmful than a perceived risk of single manager, these managers are government vetted and FMA regulated.

“Wrap detection is the fastest-growing blind spot. If you are placing a client in a wrapped version of a manager you could access directly, the wrap premium should be visible in the rationale. “

Structural changes in the market should also be part of annual reviews,  he said. “A workable annual review anchors on five questions for every placement: Is the fee still competitive within the category? Has the benchmark-relative excess return – accounting for the fee – held up? Has the underlying manager or structure changed? Does the asset allocation still match the client’s documented risk profile? And if the placement sits inside a wrap, does the wrap still earn its premium? If any answer is ‘no’ or ‘I do not know,’ that is where the adviser’s work for the year is.”

He said advisers would focus on their suitability analysis but the scoping of their advice would also be important.

“Sometimes a person just wants what fund I should go to, right?  And everything is going fine in my life.

“I just saw a 25-year-old… they may not need the whole holistic advice, they just want to know which fund is right.

“And based on risk assessment, and timeline, normally, it typically would be assisted growth. Because the KiwiSaver is not a brokerage account, it’s a retirement vehicle or for a first home.

“The scoping should match what sort of advice and your scope of disclosure statements of scope of engagement should define that as well.

“Advisers sometimes default to holistic advice, because it feels safer. So the default is, they're just going to be like six step advice process, because that feels safer. But it’s not really necessary all the time.”