Kiwisaver: Website gives in-depth fund knowledge

We need to be able to compare apples with apples when it comes to KiwiSaver.

Q: Is there a company that gives unbiased and comprehensive ratings and comparisons of the various KiwiSaver funds - return on investment year-on-year and breakdown and total cost of fees, management turnover, financial rating of the fund management company, etc?

A: You can't go past www.fundfinder.sorted.org.nz on the Sorted website.

Run by the Commission for Financial Capability, it takes the information that KiwiSaver providers legally have to send to market watchdog the Financial Markets Authority and presents it in an easy-to-digest format through Fund Finder.

KiwiSaver providers are obliged to hand over this data regularly for the purposes you outline - so the public can have consistent and comparable information on which to base investment decisions.

Using the Fund Finder you can easily slice and dice this data to allow comparison of funds across investment style, fees and returns.

At a glance you can see returns over a one and five-year period, where the money is invested, key staff and how long they've been with the company, the number of investors and the total value of the fund.

It also measures service levels by checking which providers are going above and beyond in helping their investors.

This information is also available if you dive into documents from providers, but here it is pulled into a format for easy review and, using a bookmarking tool, ongoing comparison.

Morningstar is one of the third-party companies that also analyses KiwiSaver performance, publishing quarterly reports. The most recent came out last week.

David Boyle, group manager of investor education at the Commission for Financial Capability, says the Morningstar report captures the return information, fees and asset allocations of KiwiSaver providers.

"It doesn't cover all providers like the KiwiSaver Fund Finder [does] and, of course, the information we have is online in a way that allows KiwiSaver members to easily find their fund then be able to rank, or compare it, with other like funds," he says. Morningstar's strong suit is its analysis. It has a good market commentary section detailing what's driving KiwiSaver returns and highlighting the winners and losers over the previous quarter.

It also has a market-share breakdown of the top providers and what percentage they have of the total market, says Boyle.

"The great thing is we make it easy for any KiwiSaver member to cut through the jargon and help to make it easy to compare apples with apples," says Boyle.

"The Morningstar report is more for the industry to read and look at, a snapshot of how things went for the quarter among their peers."

Canstar is another player in the KiwiSaver comparison market.

It produces a report every year - the most recent came out in September and covers up to July last year - giving each KiwiSaver fund covered a star rating out of five.

It calculates the star ratings based on the KiwiSaver account fees you pay and services delivered by providers, but scores do not take into account investment returns.

It's only available as a PDF and not every provider is included.

Disclaimer: Information provided is stated accurately to the best of the respondent's knowledge at the time of publication. It is general in nature and should not be construed, or relied on, as a recommendation to invest in a particular financial product or class of financial product. Readers should seek independent financial advice specific to their situation before making an investment decision.

To have your KiwiSaver questions answered by the NZ Herald's panel of industry players, email Helen Twose.
Helen cannot answer all questions, correspond directly with readers, or give financial advice.