KiwiSaver
Compare KiwiSaver providers, see what yours is costing you
Bank-run funds typically charge 0.70% to 1.50% a year. The lowest-cost providers charge under 0.35%. On a $60,000 balance that gap is worth around $75,000 over 25 years. Ask below and find out which side of it you're on.
General information about KiwiSaver settings, not financial advice and not a fund recommendation. If you want personal advice, we'll offer to connect you with a vetted financial adviser.
How you got here
Most people never chose their KiwiSaver fund
If you have never actively picked a fund, you were almost certainly allocated one. Plenty of people were signed up through the bank where they already had an everyday account, or auto-enrolled when they started a job, and the fund they landed in a decade ago is still the fund they are in today. It was a default, not a decision.
That matters more than it used to, because the balance is no longer small. For a lot of households KiwiSaver is now the second-largest asset they own after the house, and the settings on it have never been looked at by anyone.
| Provider type | Annual fee | Who that is |
|---|---|---|
| Bank-run schemes | 0.70% – 1.50% | ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Westpac, Kiwibank |
| Market average | 0.88% | Across all 388 funds from 31 providers |
| Active independents | 0.90% – 1.30% | Higher fee, actively managed |
| Low-cost providers | under 0.35% | Largely index-tracking |
Published fee ranges as at 2026, across 388 funds from 31 providers. Fees vary by fund within every provider, so your own fund may sit outside the range shown for its group. Check your annual statement or your provider's fund update for the figure that applies to you.
1.10%
bank-typical
$75,900 less
0.88%
market average
$54,800 less
0.35%
low-cost
Illustration only, using the published fee ranges above. Every bar starts from the same $60,000 balance and the same 7% return before fees, so the gap between them is fees and nothing else. Returns are not guaranteed and no fund returns a steady 7%.
What it costs
What a 0.75% fee gap costs you over 25 years
A fee gap of 0.75% sounds like a rounding error and behaves like a deposit on a house. Take a $60,000 balance with $4,500 a year going in, growing at 7% before fees. The only thing changing between those three bars is the fee.
Why the gap exists
A higher fee is not automatically a worse deal. Actively managed funds employ people to pick investments and charge for it, and some of them have beaten their index over long periods. Index-tracking funds do not try to beat the market, so they cost less to run and charge less.
What you are paying for is worth knowing either way. Published comparisons of five-year after-fee returns put several independent providers ahead of the bank-run schemes, and attribute most of that difference to fees rather than to investment skill. That is a reported finding about the market, not a recommendation about your fund.
The other half
Bank vs non-bank KiwiSaver returns, compared
The illustration above holds the return steady and changes only the fee, which makes it a conservative way to look at the problem. In the real market the returns differ too, and the number that decides what you retire on is the one that comes after both: the return your fund delivered once its fees had been taken out.
That is also where the easy generalisations fall over. Not every bank fund is expensive, and not every independent is cheap. BNZ's growth fund charges well under half a percent, which is less than some of the best-known active managers. What separates funds over a five-year window is the combination of what they charged and what they earned, and you cannot read that off the fee alone.
So the question worth asking about your own fund is narrow and answerable: over five years, after fees and tax, what did it return, and how does that sit against other funds taking a similar level of risk? Both numbers are published. Your provider's fund update has yours, and the FMA's Disclose register and Sorted's Smart Investor have everyone else's.
Five-year return after fees, growth funds · to 30 June 2026
Bank-run growth funds cohort average
6.5%
Non-bank growth funds cohort average
7.1%
Annualised returns after fees and 28% PIR over the five years to 30 June 2026, from Sorted Smart Investor. One flagship growth fund per provider, equally weighted: four bank-run schemes and ten non-bank ones. Cohort averages rather than individual funds, because the spread within each group is far wider than the gap between them — the best growth fund in this data returned 10.2% a year and the weakest 4.4%. Past returns are not a reliable indicator of future returns.
Takes about a minute and tells you where your own fund sits.
Fund types
KiwiSaver fund types explained, from defensive to aggressive
Every KiwiSaver fund sits somewhere on one scale: how much of it is invested in growth assets like shares and property, and how much in income assets like cash and bonds. More growth assets means a bumpier ride and, over long periods, historically more at the end. The categories below are the standard ones used across the industry, so they let you compare a fund at one provider against a fund at another.
Defensive
0-9% growth assets
Almost entirely cash and bonds. The balance barely moves, which is the point if you are spending the money within a year or two. Over a long horizon it is the slowest way to grow anything.
Conservative
10-34% growth assets
Mostly income assets with a slice of shares. Suits money you expect to need in the next three to five years, and it is where a lot of people sit without ever having chosen it.
Balanced
35-62% growth assets
A middle setting that rises and falls less than a growth fund and grows more than a conservative one over long periods. Common for people somewhere in the middle of their working life.
Growth
63-89% growth assets
Mostly shares and property. Bigger falls in a bad year, and historically the strongest returns over decades. Suits money you will not touch for a long time.
Aggressive
90-100% growth assets
Almost entirely shares. The swings are real and you need the stomach and the time horizon for them.
The reason this matters more than it sounds: someone auto-enrolled at 22 and left in a conservative fund until 45 has spent two decades in a setting designed for money that is about to be spent. Whether that is wrong for you depends on when you plan to use it, which is the first thing the chat asks about.
Four things to look up
How to find your KiwiSaver fees and returns
You already have most of what you need. Your provider sends an annual statement and publishes a quarterly fund update, and between them they answer every question on this page about your own money. Most people file the statement without opening it, which is understandable and expensive.
What did you actually pay?
Your annual statement shows total fees in dollars, not just a percentage. That figure is the one worth writing down, because a percentage of a growing balance is a growing number.
Which fund are you in?
It will be named on the statement. If it says default, conservative, or you cannot tell, that is worth knowing, because it may have been chosen for you years ago.
What has it returned after fees?
Look for the five-year annualised return after fees and tax. One good or bad year tells you very little. Five years starts to tell you something.
Are your contributions still going in?
Contribution holidays, changing jobs and going self-employed all interrupt payments, and nobody sends you a warning when they stop.
If you would rather not dig it out, the chat asks for the same four things in plain language and gives you the comparison back in about a minute.
If you do move
How to switch KiwiSaver provider
The reason most people stay put is not loyalty, it is the assumption that moving is a project. It is closer to changing power company, and it costs nothing to do.
You apply to the new provider, not the old one.
It is an online form and takes about ten minutes. The new provider contacts your existing one and moves the balance across. You do not need to tell your current provider anything.
Nothing stops while it happens.
Your contributions keep flowing through IRD from your pay, your employer keeps contributing, and the transfer is not a withdrawal, so there is no tax event and no break in your membership.
You keep everything you have built up.
Your balance, your years of membership and your eligibility for the government contribution all travel with you. Switching provider does not reset anything.
None of that tells you whether moving is right for you, and this page will not. What it does tell you is that the admin is not the reason to stay. If you want someone to look at your situation and give you an actual recommendation, that is a licensed adviser's job, and the next section is about how we hand you over.
Growth
Track your KiwiSaver alongside the rest of your money
One check is a start. What sticks is your KiwiSaver living somewhere you can see it. SortMe's Growth tab puts your KiwiSaver balance beside your mortgage, your investments and your net worth, so it stops being a mystery number in someone else's app. Connect it once (balance updates automatically) and watch it do its multi-decade thing, with fixed-rate expiry alerts on the mortgage side and the rest of your money in the same view.
Read-only connections, so SortMe can never move your money. Bank-grade AES-256 encryption. Details at Data Security.
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When to talk to a licensed financial adviser
SortMe doesn't recommend funds and doesn't give regulated financial advice, and that's deliberate. What we do is connect you with vetted, independent financial advisers when you want one. If your check raises questions worth a real conversation, we'll offer the handoff. No obligation, no clipboard-wielding salesperson, and you can say no thanks.
Or start with a conversation →
