{"id":628831,"date":"2026-10-13T01:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T01:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/628831\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T01:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T01:16:14","slug":"which-kiwisaver-providers-have-the-biggest-balances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/628831\/","title":{"rendered":"Which KiwiSaver providers have the biggest balances?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The biggest winners in terms of investment asset growth<\/a> over the year to March were Milford, Generate and Sharesies. Milford had the strongest growth in assets under management over the year, at $3.4b growth. It was followed by ASB at $2.1b.<\/p>\n

Milford was up more than $10b over five years to March.<\/p>\n

But in proportionate terms, the strongest growth was seen from newcomers Sharesies and Kernel. Sharesies grew 162% and Kernel 128%.<\/p>\n

In terms of member numbers, Milford had the largest increase over the year, at 37,383, followed by Generate at 24,320. But Sharesies grew member numbers by 128% and Kernel by 95%.<\/p>\n

ANZ lost 16,490 members over the year and Westpac 8552. In percentage terms, Pie dropped 10%.<\/p>\n

Milford and Simplicity had added around 130,000 and 100,000 members respectively over the past five years. Milford also featured as one of MJW\u2019s strongest performers over the longer term, although it had slipped this year.<\/p>\n

MJW principal Ben Trollip said brand awareness was a big driver of growth of funds. \u201cWhether that is built of strong long-term performance \u2013 like Milford or Generate \u2013 or a high degree of control and flexibility \u2013 like Sharesies and Kernel. Also, it feels like KiwiSaver advertising is become more prevalent. I\u2019ve seen some statistics suggesting transfers are high which would suggest consumers are becoming more engaged and making changes if they\u2019re unhappy with their current provider.\u201d<\/p>\n

KiwiWRAP had the highest average balance at March, at $184,600 but it only had about 1600 members and was one of the smallest providers. MAS at $107,600 and Craigs at $100,900 had relatively high average balances, too. Westpac and BNZ were among those with average balances well below the overall national average of about $40,000.<\/p>\n

Overall, 61.4% of members were contributing, according to MJW, but that was more than 80% of Kernel, KiwiWRAP and NZ Defence Force members.<\/p>\n

Fees as a percentage of assets were highest in AE, at 1.84%, according to the data, and Christian KiwiSaver, at 1.4%. Generate was at 1.32%.<\/p>\n

There were now almost 40 KiwiSaver providers. Trollip said it was surprising that there had not been consolidation of the market over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I was to speculate, I\u2019d guess the barrier to entry remains relatively low and KiwiSaver still looks like an attractive market given the strong growth overall. It does look like we will see a fall in the number of individual schemes this year with, for example, Fisher Funds going from three to one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kernel founder Dean Anderson said the growth in some schemes showed that a growing portion of the market was moving from incumbents to schemes that were investing and innovating to deliver more transparency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear, you can see that those that have kind of forgotten about KiwiSaver and their customers and basically let it stagnate for the past sort of five years are now seeing a rise of customers migrate away from those offerings.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said because the data was only until March, it potentially understated the effect of market moves since then. \u201cThis is very much an ongoing and accelerating trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said being cheap was not enough on its own to win clients. Westpac and MAS were among the cheapest in their categories, delivered top-five returns, and still lost members. \u201cSimplicity is the cheapest or near-cheapest everywhere and added about 11,000 members, but its growth came largely from default status and its \u2018disrupter\u2019 brand, not visible outperformance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Average KiwiSaver balances by company at March 2026<\/p>\n

AE: $28,400<\/p>\n

AMP: $56,100<\/p>\n

ANZ: $33,000<\/p>\n

ANZ Default: $56,100<\/p>\n

ASB: $40,800<\/p>\n

BCF: $27,200<\/p>\n

BNZ: $27,900<\/p>\n

Booster: $32,400<\/p>\n

Christian: $54,200<\/p>\n

Craigs: $100,900<\/p>\n

Evidential: $68,800<\/p>\n

Fisher Funds: $37,600<\/p>\n

Fisher Funds Plan: $31,700<\/p>\n

Fisher Funds Two: $59,100<\/p>\n

Generate: $43,700<\/p>\n

GoalsGetter: $74,000<\/p>\n

Hive: $29,700<\/p>\n

InvestNow: $71,500<\/p>\n

JMI Wealth: $71,600<\/p>\n

Kernel: $50,600<\/p>\n

KiwiWRAP: $184,600<\/p>\n

Koura: $45,200<\/p>\n

Maritime: $74,800<\/p>\n

MAS: $107,600<\/p>\n

Mercer: $61,100<\/p>\n

Milford: $79,700<\/p>\n

NZDF: $60,300<\/p>\n

NZ Funds: $45,000<\/p>\n

OneAnswer: $59,600<\/p>\n

Pathfinder: $46,700<\/p>\n

Pie: $39,500<\/p>\n

QuayStreet: $70,600<\/p>\n

SBS: $39,300<\/p>\n

Sharesies: $32,100<\/p>\n

Simplicity: $39,700<\/p>\n

Summer: $74,600<\/p>\n

SuperEasy: $60,500<\/p>\n

SuperLife: $31,100<\/p>\n

Westpac: $30,700<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest winners in terms of investment asset growth over the year to March were Milford, Generate and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72141,6326,138,813,246,305,6964,111,139,69,244,245,2994,812,223,5977],"class_list":["post-628831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-balances","tag-biggest","tag-business","tag-edmunds","tag-finance","tag-have","tag-kiwisaver","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-providers","tag-susan","tag-the","tag-which"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}