ASB's quarter to shine

It was ASB’s KiwiSaver offerings’ turn in the limelight in the September quarter with its growth, balanced and conservative funds being the best performers in both the latest quarter and in the year ended Sept 30.

Wednesday, October 22nd 2025, 8:02AM

by Jenny Ruth

By contrast, both Fisher Funds Management and Milford Asset Management’s KiwiSaver offerings were relegated to being among the worst performers, an unaccustomed position for both firms.

However, the latest MJW survey showed strong returns across the board, with median returns ranging from 2.7% for the September quarter from the 18 conservative funds in the survey to 6.1% for the 15 growth funds.

Median annual returns ranged from the conservative funds’ 5.7% to the growth funds’ 13%.
ASB’s $7.01 billion growth fund achieved a quarterly return of 7.8% and an annual return of 15.2%, the best performers in both periods, and it ranked fourth out of 14 funds over 10 years with annual returns of 9.2%.

ASB’s $4.53 billion balanced fund returned 6.4% for the quarter and 12.6% for the year compared with the median return of 16 funds of 5.4% for the quarter and 10.8% for the year.

ASB’s $3.08 billion moderate fund was beaten into second place in both the quarter and the year by AMP’s $1.01 billion moderate balanced fund which achieved a 5.2% return for the quarter and 11% for the year compared with the ASB fund’s 5% and 10.1% returns.

ASB’s $3.7 billion conservative fund, the best performer out of 18 conservative funds, achieved a 3.7% quarterly return and an annual return of 8%.

Milford’s $378 million conservative fund was the worst performer with a 1.7% quarterly return but it was sixth best performer over the year with a 6.5% return and it retained its first position over both five and 10 years with annual returns of 4.1% and 5.2% respectively.

Milford’s $267 million moderate fund was the worst performer out of 12 funds for the quarter with a 2.7% return but was fifth best performer for the year with an 8.9% return.

Fisher’s $4.26 billion growth fund was worst performer out of 15 funds with a 3.9% quarterly return but ranked 13th over the year with an 8.2% return. It ranked fifth out of 14 funds over 10 years with annual returns of 8.9%.

Fisher’s former Kiwibank and Fisher Two growth funds ranked 13th and 14th respectively over the quarter and 14th and 15th respectively for the year ended September.

Milford’s growth fund ranked 12th out of 15 funds in the quarter but fifth over the year while its balanced fund ranked 14th out of 16 funds in the quarter but fourth over the year.

However, Fisher’s default fund, also a former Kiwibank fund, was the best performer of the six default funds with a 6.1% return for the quarter and 11.7% for the year. Over three years, it ranked fourth with annual returns of 12.3%.

The worst-performing default fund was SuperLife’s, now owned by NZX’s Smart, with a 4.8% quarterly return and a 9.6% return for the year. It was also worst performer over three years with 10.9% annual returns.

MJW’s KiwiSaver survey covers the largest 17 KiwiSaver schemes by assets under management (AUM) at March 31 and these schemes accounted for 94% of the total KiwiSaver AUM.

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