Adviser complains about KiwiSaver campaign

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[UPDATED - ASB response] A financial adviser worried about ASB’s marketing campaign for its KiwiSaver schemes has taken his complaint to the Financial Markets Authority.

Thursday, June 11th 2026, 9:56AM 2 Comments

Gareth Dobson, founder and senior financial adviser at Finsol Financial Advisers, said he was concerned that the bank was advertising that its conservative and moderate funds were “number one” in the market, based on a 12-month period to the end of December.

“ASB defends this position as factually accurate because of fine-print disclaimers.”

But he said KiwiSaver was a long-term investment tool and the funds had not performed as well over three, five or 10-year periods.

“Being an investment and KiwiSaver adviser, you stay across historical returns from all the various providers, there’s consistent reports from Morningstar, there’s different sources for returns data. So when I saw this advertisement from ASB pop up on my screen, and I’m an ASB customer as well, I thought ‘oh that’s interesting’."

"Flying the flag of number one KiwiSaver scheme and I was like what’s the justification or this?"

Then I looked at the small print…. Conservative and moderate fund, one-year return. That’s how you’re able to position yourself as a market leader with KiwiSaver.”

He said he asked his network to see whether others shared his concerns and found they did. “Everyone was like ‘no this is not right’. And I challenged them on it. They didn’t even treat it like a complaint, I went through customer service, I got the same email back about five times.”

He said the final response was the bank could not give him what he was looking for.

“I thought well you know what? I’ll go to the FMA.”

He said the FMA had sent a fairly generic email saying it had received the complaint.

“ASB heavily promotes the convenience of tracking KiwiSaver balances directly inside their everyday banking app. There is a deep irony here: a disciplined long-term investor should not be checking their balance daily. Promoting short-term tracking and celebrating a temporary 12-month upswing encourages return-chasing behaviour, which fund managers and advisers consistently warn against. Fine-print disclaimers do not erase the misleading impression created for everyday consumers.”

He said more generally he had concerns about the way banks were treated when dealing with KiwiSaver compared to advisers.

He said while independent advisers were held to rigorous CoFI and FSLAA standards with regulatory pressure to service, document and review client portfolios, the banks were allowed to manage hundreds of thousands of clients based only on mass-produced, automated communication.

Dobson said he recently reviewed a client’s situation where there was $1.7 million in a bank KiwiSaver scheme.

“She was left entirely on autopilot in a moderate fund without any custom asset allocation or short-term cash facility advice. Furthermore, her prescribed investor rate was left incorrect at 28 percent instead of 17.5 percent for three consecutive years.”

He said his complaint was not a commercial dispute between independent advisers and banks but was about whether the regulator would hold major institutions to the same standard of fair conduct, ethical marketing and proactive client care that was expected of independent financial advisers.

ASB says: "All ASB advertising is subject to regular, comprehensive reviews to ensure it is consistent and accurate. Our number one claim is underpinned by the fact that the ASB KiwiSaver Scheme ranked first for 12 month returns in Conservative and Moderate fund categories for the 12 months to 31st December 2025. This has been substantiated by independent Morningstar data, with the basis of the claims, sources used, as well as the limitations all explained or disclaimed within the adverts or on the ASB webpage. This data is publicly available and outlines ASB's KiwiSaver performance across the different time periods."

"We are proud of the work we are delivering to achieve excellent outcomes for our nearly half a million KiwiSaver customers, with our strong returns seeing ASB named KiwiSaver Fund Manager of the Year for 2026 by Morningstar. Since partnering with global fund manager BlackRock nearly five years ago, we have achieved strong investment performance for our investors, with all the diversified ASB KiwiSaver Scheme funds delivering first or second quartile performance in their category, over the 10-year period – this is in the same Morningstar December 2025 KiwiSaver survey. We agree that long-term performance really matters for Kiwi and continue to work on improving customer outcomes over the long-run."

Tags: ASB

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