ASB solidified its number two ranking in the KiwiSaver market by the end of last year, pulling ahead of the Fisher Funds collective while closing the gap on market leader, ANZ.
The latest quarterly Morningstar KiwiSaver report shows the single ASB scheme held more than $18.3 billion as at December 31 compared to a little over $18 billion for Fisher and the ANZ score of $21.9 billion.
Fisher, which like ANZ now comprises three underlying schemes, stood equal with ASB in the June 30 rankings last year. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia-owned entity also gained almost $1 billion on ANZ year-on-year to finish the period $3.6 billion shy of the number one KiwiSaver provider: as at December 31, 2023, the gap was $4.5 billion, according to Morningstar data.
ANZ has been losing KiwiSaver market share over the last decade or so with the most recent reading of 18 per cent well down from its historical high of more than 25 per cent.
The Morningstar gauge puts the ASB market share at 15 per cent followed by Fisher (14.8 per cent), BT/Westpac (9.7 per cent) and the fast-growing Milford on 8.7 per cent.
Greg Bunkall, Morningstar director global fund data, says in the report: “The five largest KiwiSaver providers account for approximately 66% of assets in our database, or around 81 billion dollars under management. We estimate these five providers will deduct more than 650 million dollars in fees in 2025 from KiwiSaver members, at an average fee of around 0.80 of a cent per dollar invested.”
Nonetheless, several smaller KiwiSaver providers continue to post strong growth with Kernel, Kōura, InvestNow and Pathfinder, for example, expanding by between 40 per cent to 166 per cent over the 12-month period.
From a standing start just over a year ago, the Sharesies scheme also ended 2024 on almost $260 million. Nikko also showed some signs of growth following a long stagnant stretch, closing the year on almost $70 million ($58 million at the end of December 2023) during a period when it shifted to a new multi-manager model.
While most providers in the Morningstar KiwiSaver universe (that covers about 95 per cent of assets under management) reported middling to strong annual growth, the Pie Funds scheme remained flat year-on-year at just over $570 million.
Almost all of the diversified funds in the survey saw positive investment returns over the quarterly and 12-month periods with the NZX-owned active manager, QuayStreet, and Generate among the best short-term performers.
The Morningstar data – as per the earlier-released Melville Jessup Weaver (MJW) survey – shows the ANZ diversified options now sit near the bottom in investment returns across all periods up to 10 years while Milford has fallen off somewhat over the last year while maintaining a decent long-term record.
Niche funds offered by Kōura and Kernel finished first and last, respectively, over the quarter and year with the bitcoin strategy offered by the former up 142 per cent in 12 months while the latter’s clean energy index-tracking down 17.4 per cent for the same period.
But traditional asset allocation theory has held out over the 10-year period, the Morningstar report shows with the aggressive KiwiSaver diversified fund cohort returning an annualised “9.3%, followed by growth (8.3%), balanced (6.7%), moderate (4.7%), and conservative (4.3%)”.
Total KiwiSaver assets under management counted by the research house reach almost $122 billion as at December 31, climbing some $24 billion – or almost 25 per cent – year-on-year.