The overall tone for the quarter was cautious optimism, while inflation was a concern, global growth prospects improved, and global equity markets delivered strong returns, particularly for unhedged holdings due to the weaker NZ dollar, says Morningstar director global fund data Greg Bunkall.
The five biggest providers, ANZ, Fisher, ASB, Westpac and Milford accounted for 68% of assets and 69% of the $849m generated in fees. The average annual fee was around 0.78%.
Average asset allocation was 40.7% income and 59.3% growth, compared to 42.9% income and 57.1% growth for the previous quarter.
ANZ retained its usual position as the biggest provider with $20.4 billion in assets but at 18.8%, its market share declined from 19.5% the previous quarter. Fisher at second place with ($16.67b) stayed the same with 15.4% market share over the last two quarters. Nipping at Fisher’s heels, ASB was again third ($16.64b) but closed the gap, increasing its market share to 15.3% up from 15.1% at the end of 2023.
In fourth place Westpac ($10.7b) also slipped to 9.9% from 10.2% at the end of December, while Milford in fifth place ($8.5b) increased market share to 7.9% from 7.5% the previous quarter.
All multisector KiwiSaver funds produced positive returns for the period, with funds containing risk assets performing best. Returns for multi sector funds ranged from 2% for conservative funds to 8.8% for aggressive.
Of the default options, Booster ($563.6m) had the best returns for the quarter (5.5%) and the year (14%), while Westpac, the biggest default provider with $754.1 million, reported the lowest returns (4.4%) and (11.1%) for the same respective periods.
QuayStreet continued to perform well across many time periods in the conservative and balanced categories, Milford had consistently high performance with moderate, balanced and growth categories over the long term (five to 10 years), but has struggled to place in the top spots over shorter time spans. Generate had strong numbers across many time periods.
In the conservative category Fisher Funds topped returns for the quarter (2.6%), the one year (9.6%) and five year period (3.9%). Milford had the best returns for the 10 year period with 5.8%.
In the moderate category Generate topped the quarter (4.1%), the one year (11.2%), five year (4.9%) and 10 year period (6%).
For balanced it was QuayStreet’s socially responsible fund which topped the quarter (7.5%) and the one year period (16.7%), while QuayStreet’s balanced fund had the highest returns for the three year period (7.6%). Milford’s balanced fund had the highest returns for the five year (8.1%) and 10 year (8.8%) period.
In the growth category, QuayStreet topped the quarter (9.3%) and the three year (9.6%) period. Generate growth fund was top for the one year period (20.3%), while Milfford active growth took top place for the five year (10.6%) and 10-year (10.4%).
In the aggressive category it was Generate focused growth fund at number one (11.4%) for the quarter, the year (25.4%) and the decade (10.5%), with Milford topping the three year period (8.6%) and Booster socially responsible high growth topping the five year returns (10.9%).
Over 10 years investors in the aggressive category have had average returns of 9.1%, followed by growth (8.4%), balanced (6.8%), moderate (4.8%), and conservative (4.3%).
*Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Booster’s socially responsible fund topped the 10-year category. This has been corrected to Generate. Westpac has fourth biggest marketshare.
