KiwiSaver funds under management (FUM) tipped over the $35 billion mark during the June quarter as bank schemes consolidated their hold on the sector, new data shows.
According to figures supplied by Australian actuarial consulting and research house Plan For Life (PFL), total KiwiSaver FUM rose 3.8 per cent, or just under $1.3 billion, in the three months to June 30 with the top two providers (ANZ and ASB respectively) accounting for almost half of the increase.
Both ANZ and ASB saw KiwiSaver FUM increase by about 4 per cent over the quarter, translating to respective net gains of $338 million and $238 million. At the same time, the Westpac KiwiSaver scheme again clocked gains of about 4 per cent, further gaining on the third-largest provider, AMP, which grew by 2.3 per cent over the three-month period.
With more than $4 billion under management, the Westpac scheme (managed by subsidiary BT Funds) now sits less than $50 million behind AMP in the FUM run.
The remaining Australian-owned bank scheme, BNZ, also posted solid gains during the quarter after increasing 8.5 per cent (to hit $873 million), representing the fastest-growing scheme in the PFL top 10 list. Milford Asset Management also recorded a strong quarter with its KiwiSaver scheme up 7.8 per cent to finish the period with just under $600 million in FUM.
However, the latest Aon Hewitt KiwiSaver report, released last week, ranks the Auckland-based boutique scheme Generate as the fastest-growing provider overall.
The Aon figures show Generate (which falls outside the PFL published list of schemes) expanded by 28.4 per cent in the three months to end June to close the period with $225 million under management.
“Generate’s increase in funds under management has been impressive – rising by $86m (more than 60 per cent) since the start of the year,” the Aon report, authored by investment consultant Guy Fisher, says.
But Generate’s performance has been mixed over the latest quarterly and annual periods, the Aon data shows, with the firm’s flagship ‘Focussed Growth’ fund ranked in the bottom five in both time-frames with returns of -0.9 per cent and -3.3 per cent respectively.
Conversely, the smaller Generate Conservative fund was a top-five performer over both the quarter and year with respective returns of 1.7 per cent and 7.7 per cent.
“Conservative funds fared best again this quarter, with the median fund in this category returning 1 per cent. The median growth manager returned just 0.3 per cent over the same period,” the Aon report says. “Over the long run growth fund returns have ranged from 3.2 per cent pa (AMP Aggressive) to 8.2 per cent (Fisher Funds), whereas conservative fund returns have ranged from 2.7 per cent pa (Fisher Funds Two Preservation Fund) to 6.5 per cent pa (Aon Russell).
The big four Australian-owned banks plus the NZ government-controlled Kiwibank collectively manage about 67.5 per cent of assets in the Aon survey (which excludes some funds covered by PFL), the report says.
“The five banks have seen funds under management increase by another $925m over the last quarter – they have added nearly $2bn in KiwiSaver funds so far this year,” the Aon study says.
