KiwiSaver calculator all sorted - yeah right!

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Tuesday, February 5th 2008, 1:24PM 3 Comments

by Philip Macalister

Working out the fees on KiwiSaver funds is something, it seems, even the experts can't do. From memory there are at least three calculators out there. First was one from Trident Research in Christchurch. The second was from Gareth Morgan - who promptly bagged his competitor as soon as he entered the market. Then many people bagged Gareth's one as it appeared to be a blatant push for his own product. This has been achieved by making a lot of assumptions about other funds. Now we have a piece of work from the Retirement Commission, which has been bagged by fund managers. Just to make things even more interesting, one of the peer reviewers of the Retirement Commission - Michael Littlewood - bagged Consumers’ KiwiSaver site. What can you make of all this? Basically, no-one really knows how fees will stack up in funds. This is a bit of an inditment on the savings industry, highlighting what is a weakness. One argument put to me, and one I like - is that it seems we won't really know what the levels of fees in KiwiSaver funds are till next year when MERs (management expense ratios) are available for the funds, plus their performance. But of course then there are those who bag the guidelines for calculating MERs!

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