Struggling savers draining retirement funds to cover living costs
KiwiSaver members are repeatedly dipping into their funds to get them out of financial hardship in some cases to the extent they’re landing back at a zero balance.
Scheme supervisor Public Trust, which acts as trustee for around $50 billion of KiwiSaver funds, processed around 20,000 applications for financial hardship in 2024, more than double the number seen in 2023.
“We approve around three months, or 13 weeks, of living expenses and more and more, there's a large proportion of our applicants, members, who come back at the end of the 13 weeks and haven't been able to resolve their financial hardship,” says David Callanan, Public Trust’s General Manager of Corporate Trustee Services.
“And then we are paying them for another 13 weeks.
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