Contrary to the lovely correlations supplied by Claire Matthews and Callum Thomas from Massey University, KiwiSaver members are not abandoning the banks.
In their January 2012 study, based on an analysis of two and a bit years of KiwiSaver annual report data (2009/10, 2010/11 plus a slice of 2008/9), the authors conclude: "Contrary to expectation, the primary finding was for a significantly negative relation between bank ownership and member outflows."
Matthews told the Herald that while received wisdom suggested banks were the crowd favourites "[KiwiSaver member] actual behaviour is showing is they're going away from the banks".
This claim is actually easy to test and the results don't back up the bank-exodus hypothesis. If, in fact, KiwiSaver members were exiting the banks en-masse, this should be reflected in a declining market share of the financial institutions in question.
But according to research I have conducted over the previous five years, banks have gained market share year-on-year.