Mike's Minute: KiwiSaver, success and competition

KiwiSaver is a newsmaker. 

It's making news of late because of the so-called "hardship withdrawals". 

Bad news is an easy headline. 

What is covered less is the bulk of the KiwiSaver story i.e. lots of people are in it, the returns are growing and, for most people, it is a half decent way to save on a long-term basis. 

But also in the latest quarterly statements (this is for the December quarter) is a fun fact that those who like to fixate on competition could do with looking at. 

KiwiSaver and those who run the various funds is not a lot different to banking, or supermarkets, or airlines, or telcos, or power companies. 

In other words, if you want to, you can ask some questions around competition. 

Like the last Government, this Government has been fixated with competition, or lack of it. They have investigated it, jawboned it, threatened it, and sometimes introduced rules and laws to change it. 

Yet punters choice rarely gets given the weighting it should. 

In KiwiSaver there are about 25 providers and yet five have the bulk of our money. Why? 

Is there a lack of competition? Clearly not. In fact, three of the top five are the banks. Oh, the irony! 

We hate the banks, the banks rip us off, the banks are to be treated with the utmost suspicion, if only we had more competition with banks. In KiwiSaver we do and yet we can't flock to the banks fast enough with our life savings. 

The lesson I think, if any of us want to learn it, around power companies and banks and insurance is basically we are lazy. Moaning is easier than doing something about our problem. 

The laziness is never better exemplified in KiwiSaver than with the ridiculous number of default accounts i.e. people who can't even be bothered picking a fund. 

There are 25 providers and five of them have 65% of the business, which is $90 billion of the $145 billion under stewardship. 

Are we exercised? Are we worried? Do we even realise? 

Don’t look now, but they actually do a good job as well. $5 billion was added in the past quarter. 

Unless you're in Bitcoin, and more fool you, over the past decade if you were in the right fund you’ve been getting about 9% a year, every year, for 10 years. 

That almost sounds like a model that works. It could be the competition. 

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