KiwiSaver funds back in black

FundSource says the majority of funds covered in its reports are showing positive returns for the three months ending May 31.

Thursday, June 18th 2009, 11:48AM

"Many KiwiSaver members tracking their performance over the last quarter will be pleased to see that the majority of returns are now in the black, and they may now be assessing the extent to which the underlying assets they are invested in have begun to recover," FundSource head Yvonne Davie says.

As a snapshot, the following table shows the varying levels of performance across KiwiSaver Defensive, Balanced and Growth sectors, and the top performing fund in each category.

KiwiSaver - 31 May 2009
Sector	Top performer in its sector	Fund Return over 3 mth	Sector Avg over 3 mth	Sector Avg over 1 yearr
Diversified Defensive	ASB Firstchoice Active Conservative	4.30%	2.36%	1.80%

Diversified Balanced	SmartKiwi Balanced	9.23%	4.86%	-7.36%

Diversified Growth	Fisher Funds Growth	20.92%	8.46%	-14.43%

Note: Returns are shown gross of tax and net of management fees.

“While each of the above top performing funds come from different providers and have different asset allocations, they do share a common feature that has contributed to their strong performance,” Davie said. Each of the above funds has a reasonable allocation to Australasian equities, and both the New Zealand and Australian markets have rallied quite strongly relative to the rest of the world over the three-month period. For instance the NZX Gross is up 9.59%, S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation 13.93% and MSCI World Free Gross increased 3.55%.

"While focusing on short term performance is not necessarily advisable when thinking about long term savings, it is interesting to note how the strong performance of late has been mainly attributable to our own local market and our neighbour’s across the Tasman,” said Davie.

“The key for KiwiSavers is to ensure that they are in the appropriate fund for their own circumstances, and that will of course include how long they will be contributing to their KiwiSaver fund prior to retirement.”

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