NZ KiwiSaver 2026 Landscape: Fees, Performance, and the Data

422 funds. 37 schemes. 29 managers. Total fund charges ranging from 0.25% to 3.33%. And over 10 years, of the 157 funds with a full decade of returns data, only 2 beat their own chosen benchmark.

Those are the headline numbers from our latest snapshot of publicly disclosed KiwiSaver fund data. They tell a story more nuanced than either the "passive wins" narrative or the "active managers deliver" narrative you may have seen over the past few weeks.

This article lays out the fee spread, the performance reality, the wrap layer sitting on top, and what all of it means for New Zealanders saving for retirement.

Why this is being talked about now

On 20 April 2026, RNZ ran a piece titled Big-name KiwiSaver providers face questions over returns, highlighting a run of short-horizon numbers where lower-fee passive schemes outpaced some well-known active managers. Most of the debate that followed missed the longer picture.

Separately, the FMA has kept fee disclosure and value-for-money analysis front and centre. The KiwiSaver Annual Report 2025 puts the position bluntly:

The law states that KiwiSaver providers must not charge fees that are unreasonable. The FMA considers that what is reasonable will depend on what value a KiwiSaver member receives in return for the fees they pay.

The same report put total KiwiSaver fees for the year to March 2025 at $868.5 million, steady at 0.7% of funds under management, and noted that industry fees have declined from around 1.10% in 2012 to 0.71% by 2023 and have stabilised since.

And the product shelf keeps shifting. GoalsGetter rebranded from Nikko in September 2025. InvestNow's KiwiSaver scheme has grown to 45 funds, including some of the lowest-cost index products in the market. Wrap platforms and fund-of-fund structures now sit over a material chunk of KiwiSaver assets. The effect on the fee a member actually pays is not always visible at first glance.

So: one current news cycle, one live regulatory expectation, one evolving product landscape. It is a good moment to look at the whole dataset.

The fee spread

Across all 422 open and recently-closed KiwiSaver funds in the snapshot, total annual fund charges (TAFC) average 0.82%. The median is 0.77%. Those averages hide enormous dispersion.

Grouping by manager (averaging across all funds each manager offers) gives a clearer picture:

Source: our analysis of publicly disclosed KiwiSaver fund data, April 2026.

Simplicity's 0.25% flat fee is the effective floor for a mainstream multi-asset KiwiSaver fund. Kernel's 25 funds average 0.27%, with a flat 0.25% on most core products. At the other end, AE KiwiSaver's halal fund sits at 3.33% because of the specialist screening and smaller scale; it is an outlier rather than a benchmark.

A 1% fee difference on a $50,000 balance is $500 a year. Compounded at a 7% gross return across 30 years (ignoring contributions for simplicity), that drag reduces the terminal balance by more than $130,000. The FMA's 2025 annual KiwiSaver report shows that New Zealanders collectively paid $868.5 million in KiwiSaver fees in the year to March 2025. Whether any given member got value for that spend is the question the regulator keeps returning to.

The performance reality

Here is where the conversation gets harder, and where the reported data rewards a careful read.

Every KiwiSaver fund discloses a benchmark. Quarterly fund updates compare the fund's return against that benchmark at 1, 3, 5 and 10-year horizons. The 10-year comparison is the most useful for a rigorous read because it smooths through market cycles.

Of the 422 funds in the snapshot, 157 have a full 10 years of benchmark comparison data. Across those 157:

• 2 funds beat their benchmark by more than 0.25% per year.
• 4 funds were within ±0.25% per year of their benchmark.
• 151 funds underperformed their benchmark by more than 0.25% per year.

The average excess return over 10 years across those 157 funds is -1.42% per year. That is an uncomfortable number if you read it without context. It is a different number once you understand the methodology.

The methodology note that changes how you read the data

Each fund's benchmark is disclosed by the manager. About 41% of funds use an external index like the S&P/NZX 50 Gross, MSCI World, or a Morningstar Target Allocation series. About 50% use a composite benchmark designed by the manager, weighted to the fund's own asset allocation. The remaining 9% use a self-referential measure (Fisher's glidepath and Koura's Strategy funds, for example) or no benchmark at all.

Benchmark returns are typically gross of fees and tax. Fund returns in the quarterly updates are reported net of fees and after tax at the highest 28% Prescribed Investor Rate (PIR). That puts the two on different footings. The benchmark gets a headstart each year equal to the fee plus PIE tax on the fund's taxable income. Importantly, not every dollar of return is taxable under the PIE regime: NZ and Australian equity gains are largely exempt, and foreign equities are taxed under FIF rules (typically 5% of opening value at 28%). Real-world fund update data suggests the tax drag on a typical growth fund runs around 0.7 to 1.2 percentage points per year, not 28% of the reported return. Combined with a 1% fee, the total drag against a gross benchmark is roughly 1.5 to 2 percentage points per year.

That is not a trivial accounting artefact. On the corrected basis, the average 10-year excess across those 157 funds is roughly +0.2 percentage points, not -1.42%. About two thirds of funds are matching or slightly beating their benchmarks on a gross basis. Clear outperformance (more than +1% per year gross, after stripping out fees and tax) is still rare, showing up in roughly one fund in twelve. The gap between a fund's reported excess and its combined fee-plus-tax drag tells you more than either number alone.

The two funds that beat over 10 years

Naming them factually, from the public record:

• OneAnswer Select International Share Fund (OneAnswer KiwiSaver Scheme, manager: ANZ New Zealand Investments). 10-year annualised return 12.05% vs MSCI World (ex Australia) 11.25%, excess +0.80%. TAFC 0.90%. This is an external, investable benchmark. The fund has beaten it after both fees and 28% PIR tax, which is the hardest comparison basis.
• QuayStreet New Zealand Equity Fund (QuayStreet KiwiSaver Scheme). 10-year annualised return 8.03% vs S&P/NZX 50 Gross 7.72%, excess +0.31%. TAFC 1.27%. Also an external benchmark, and also beaten after fees and 28% PIR tax. (QuayStreet is the investment manager. The scheme's legal manager of record is SmartShares Limited, following the 2022 acquisition of QuayStreet by NZX Wealth Technologies.)

That is the full list over the decade window at a ±0.25% threshold. Four more funds were within ±0.25%. The rest trailed.

Absolute returns tell a different story

If you ignore benchmarks and just sort the 10-year list by absolute net return, active strategies take eight of the top ten spots; two SuperLife passive funds fill the other two. The leaders:

Source: our analysis of 10-year publicly disclosed KiwiSaver fund data, April 2026. Returns shown are net of fund charges and after tax at the highest 28% PIR, per FMA fund update reporting standard.

Some of these beat their benchmark; most did not. But a member who sat in Milford Active Growth for the last decade compounded at 8.90% after fees, and several of the funds above charged over 1.20%. Absolute outcomes and benchmark-relative outcomes are asking different questions.

RNZ's 20 April 2026 piece compared 1-year and 3-year numbers where lower-fee passive managers (Simplicity, Kernel, SuperLife) outpaced well-known active managers like Milford, Generate, and Fisher Funds. Those numbers are real. The methodological caveat is that a 1-year or 3-year comparison between a newer passive product and a 10-year-old active one is not like-for-like on track record, and does not isolate the fee effect from the asset-allocation effect. Over a full 10-year window, where both styles have had the same market conditions to work with, the picture narrows.

The active vs passive debate, at the fund level, is a fund-by-fund argument. The absolute-return leaders show that some active products have 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% fund that trails its benchmark by more than its fee does not.

The wrap layer

Here is what has changed in the last few years, and what most of the market-level analysis does not yet reflect.

A wrap fund invests through another manager's fund or fund range rather than running the underlying portfolio itself. The wrap manager adds a layer of fee for platform, administration, and in some cases distribution. On the reported data, the snapshot identifies 77 wrap funds across the KiwiSaver universe (out of 422), held within schemes like InvestNow (23 wraps), GoalsGetter (12), QuayStreet (12), Summer (10), Aurora (8), Sharesies (8), and AMP (4).

Comparing wrapped and direct funds within the same growth category gives the wrap premium, measured here in basis points (1 bps = 0.01%):

Source: our analysis of publicly disclosed KiwiSaver fund data, April 2026. Conservative category omitted due to small sample size in wrap sleeve.

Milford Active Growth costs 1.05% held directly in the Milford KiwiSaver Plan, 1.25% accessed via GoalsGetter (a 20 bps wrap premium), and 1.49% accessed via AMP (a 44 bps wrap premium). Same underlying strategy, three price points.

Not every wrap is bad value. InvestNow's Foundation Series is a DIY wrap with total fund charges from 0.03% (Foundation Series US 500) to 0.38% (Foundation Series Growth). These wraps give members access to low-cost index exposures that would otherwise be hard to hold inside a KiwiSaver scheme. The wrap spread there is positive-value because the underlying fund would not be easily reachable.

The wraps that deserve scrutiny are the ones that repackage a manager you could already access directly, at a higher fee than the direct version. The question to ask is simple: is the wrap layer delivering something you 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.

Benchmarks aren't all created equal

The benchmark distribution is itself a useful data point:

• 172 funds use an external index (S&P/NZX, MSCI, Morningstar Target Allocation, and similar).
• 212 funds use a composite benchmark designed by the manager, weighted to the fund's asset allocation.
• 18 funds use a self-referential benchmark (Fisher's glidepath funds, Koura's Strategy funds).
• 20 funds have no benchmark disclosed, mostly cash-like or defensive products where the concept is less meaningful.

Composite benchmarks are not inherently wrong. A balanced fund with a 60/40 target allocation needs a benchmark that reflects that allocation; no external single index does. But composites disclosed by the manager, with no fees or tax, are a high bar. Where an external liquid benchmark is available, that is a firmer comparison.

What this means for New Zealanders saving in KiwiSaver

Three things.

First, fees matter and the spread is wide. Within the same growth category, members can be paying anywhere from 0.25% to over 1.50% for broadly comparable exposure. The difference compounds over decades. Looking at your fund's total fund charge on Smart Investor and comparing it to category peers is a sensible annual habit.

Second, benchmark-relative performance matters, but methodology matters more. Fund returns shown on Smart Investor are after fees and 28% PIR tax; benchmarks are pre-fees, pre-tax. A reported "miss" of a few percent is usually the fee-plus-tax drag, not poor management. A much larger miss is a different question.

Third, low fees are not automatically better. Absolute outcomes matter. A 1.05% fund that compounds at 8.9% for a decade beats a 0.25% fund with no track record. Ask whether the specific fund has earned its fee, not whether the asset class is cheap on average.