KEY POINTS:
The number of people enrolling for the Government's KiwiSaver scheme has been twice that expected - with more than 200,000 signing up in the first three months.
Inland Revenue figures show 212,794 people had joined KiwiSaver by October 5 and 21,113 had chosen to opt out of the scheme.
Treasury expected that 345,000 people or about 30,000 a month would join by the end of the year.
A monthly average puts the most recent figures at about 70,000 a month although the numbers have been boosted by a strong increase in the past month.
At the end of August, the Inland Revenue Department had received 129,591 enrolments for KiwiSaver and 5900 opt-outs.
In the past five weeks, there have been 83,203 enrolments.
Almost half the enrolments have come from people actively choosing to join the scheme, rather than those being automatically enrolled when they start a new job.
Of the total enrolments, 101,748 have chosen their own provider and gone directly to a scheme, 67,028 have joined through their employer and 44,018 new employees were automatically enrolled by their employers.
Almost half of those who have joined the scheme are under 45 and the gender balance has been fairly evenly split - 52 per cent of enrolments coming from females and 48 per cent from males.
Finance Minister Michael Cullen said it was encouraging that so many people had decided that KiwiSaver was the right choice for them.
"The latest enrolment numbers reinforce that KiwiSaver is a simple and appealing way to save for retirement for a broad range of New Zealanders," he said.
The first contributions were passed from the IRD to the scheme providers last week.
More than $41 million of KiwiSaver money is expected to have been transferred by the end of this month.
