By Susan Edmunds for RNZ

It may be the country’s biggest KiwiSaver manager, but ANZ’s returns are not near top of the table, new data shows.

Morningstar’s latest KiwiSaver survey shows the highest-performing fund in the year to December was Koura’s bitcoin fund, up 142% over a year.

The lowest performer was Kernel’s clean energy, down 17. 4%.

Conservative funds returned an average 1% in the quarter and 7.4% over a year.

Moderate funds were up 1.3% in the December quarter and 8.7% in the year.

Balanced was up 2.8% in three months and 13% over the year, growth of 3.3% in the quarter and 15% in the year, and aggressive 5% in the quarter and 19.1% in the year.

ANZ has the largest share of the KiwiSaver market, with $22 billion of the total $121.9b under management.

But over 10 years its performance is 12th of the conservative funds, sixth among moderate, 14th among balanced and 10th among growth.

Over one year, it was 18th among conservative funds, 21st in moderate, 32nd among balanced funds, 25th and 26th among growth funds, and 16th among aggressive.

Kernel Wealth founder Dean Anderson said that was an issue.

“New Zealand’s biggest KiwiSaver provider was last in all the core diversified funds during 2024, except one where it was second-to-last. A continuation of astoundingly poor results from ANZ.

“Well over half a million Kiwis retirement is suffering as a result, many who are too complacent to review and look elsewhere, or who simply believe the big brands can be trusted.”

An ANZ spokesperson said all of its schemes had positive returns in the 12 months to December 31, after fees. But they acknowledged the bank’s performance relative to benchmarks was “challenging”.

“This was primarily driven by our external manager lineup in international equities.

“Market performance has been unusually concentrated in a small number of large international technology stocks in recent times. For our actively managed portfolios our underlying managers hold only part of the market, so have not benefited from all of the performance of those stocks.

“In addition, some of the companies that our active managers selected have underperformed due to stock-specific risks - risks that are unique to an individual company as opposed to the broader market,” the spokesperson said.

“The world is changing rapidly, and investment markets are no different.”

Anderson said the clean energy fund was only 0.5% of Kernel’s funds under management.

- RNZ