KiwiSaver 2022: higher fees, lower investment returns

Income from administration fees fell from $80.8m last year to $50.3m in 2022 but income from management fees jumped 12.8% to $642.3m.

These are among a raft of figures released this morning by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) in its annual KiwiSaver report, covering the period from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022.

The FMA says the rise in fees reflects a 10% hike in funds under management, from $81.2b to $89.7b. Almost half of the rise in FUM was in growth funds, totalling $38.5b and up 17.7% year-on-year. Investment in conservative funds dropped by 14.4% over the year to $18.2b, largely because default fund members were moved to balanced funds which rose 20.8% to $26.4b.

The FMA says the shift in the amounts invested in different fund types is consistent with a longer-term trend where the numbers of investors in conservative funds (excluding previous default members) has shrunk 3.6% from 2017 to 2022 while growth fund membership has ballooned 54.8% in the same period, now accounting for nearly half of overall membership.