A university level education is needed to understand key KiwiSaver documents, researchers at AUT Business School have found.
The product disclosure statements, designed for a general New Zealand audience, were found to require a high level of education to be understood.
Aaron Gilbert and Ayesha Scott found that the product disclosure statements, which replaced the prospectuses and investment statements, were shorter and contained simpler language but still required a high level of literacy.
"On average, simplified disclosure has made these documents easier to understand for our average New Zealander who is thinking about or invested in KiwiSaver," Scott said.
"This means there is less specialised jargon used in a product disclosure statement in comparison to the previous prospectus document. However the results were a little mixed in that the average level of education needed to understand the general text is a little bit higher now."
