What you actually pay each year
KiwiSaver fees come in three parts, and most members can only name the first one:
- Annual fund charge — a percentage of your balance, typically 0.25% to 1.25%. This is the headline fee.
- Flat administration fee — a fixed dollar amount, commonly $18 to $36 a year (BNZ about $18; Milford, Fisher Funds and Generate about $36; Booster and Summer about $30; Simplicity, Kernel, ASB, ANZ, Westpac and SuperLife charge none).
- Performance fee — an extra charge when a fund beats a hurdle. It can add 0.1% to 0.5% to the total in a good year, and it appears in fund updates, not in advertising.
Typical fees by provider type (2026)
| Provider type | Typical annual fund charge |
|---|---|
| Low-cost index (Simplicity, Kernel) | 0.24% – 0.27% |
| Bank schemes (ANZ, ASB, Westpac, BNZ) | 0.49% – 0.85% |
| Industry average growth fund | ~1.07% |
| Active managers with performance fees | up to ~1.25% |
The spread across the whole market is wider than most people expect — from about 0.25% at the cheap end to over 3% for a handful of niche funds.
What that difference costs over 20 years
On a $50,000 balance growing at 5% gross, the fee alone produces this spread:
| Annual fee | Balance after 20 years | Cost versus 0.25% |
|---|---|---|
| 0.25% | $132,700 | — |
| 0.50% | $129,000 | $3,700 |
| 1.00% | $121,800 | $10,900 |
| 1.25% | $119,600 | $13,100 |
Fees are charged on your whole balance, so the dollar cost rises every year as the balance grows. A 1% fee on a $200,000 balance is $2,000 a year — real money, taken whether the fund performs or not.
Where to find your real fee
- Provider's fund update (published quarterly, required by the FMA). Look for the table showing what a $10,000 balance paid in fees.
- Product disclosure statement — the legal fee description, including performance fees.
- Your annual statement — providers show the dollar amount deducted, which is the number that actually matters.
The FMA's fund-finder tool lets you compare the same figure across schemes — useful because providers quote fees in different ways.
A practical fee check, once a year
- Write down the total fee (fund charge + flat fee + an allowance for performance fees).
- Compare it with the cheapest comparable fund of the same type — not with a cash fund.
- Check the 5-year and 10-year returns after fees and tax against the relevant index.
- If the fund is more than about 0.5% above the low-cost options and has not beaten its benchmark over 10 years, consider switching.
A 10-minute check once a year is the highest-paid work most New Zealanders will ever do: on a $60,000 balance, moving from 1.25% to 0.25% saves about $600 a year, forever, for the rest of your investing life.
Deep dive — 2026 update
Judge fees and returns together, in this order
A low fee is not a strategy on its own — but a high fee is a guaranteed loss. The decision order that holds up over decades:
- Rule out anything above about 1.5%. That is not a market-beating management fee; it is a structural drag that almost no NZ fund has overcome after tax.
- Compare within the same fund type. A 0.25% cash fund and a 0.25% growth fund are not the same product. Compare growth with growth, balanced with balanced.
- Check 10-year returns after fees and tax against the index. Only a small minority of active NZ funds beat their benchmark over a decade; most of the ones that do have not done it consistently.
- Then choose the lowest total fee among the funds that pass steps 1–3.
For most members this process ends at a low-cost index fund in the right asset mix — but it ends there because of the evidence, not because cheap is automatically better.
The small-balance trap
Flat administration fees hurt most when your balance is small. On a $2,000 balance, a $36 annual admin fee alone is 1.8% — before the fund charge is added. Someone just starting out with three years of part-time work contributions can easily pay 2.2% in total fees at a provider charging $36 plus 0.5%.
Practical rule: while your balance is under about $10,000, favour a provider with no flat fee. Once the balance is larger, a flat fee becomes proportionally trivial and the fund charge is the only number that matters.
Cutting your fees: the 15-minute process
- Log into your provider's portal and note your current fund and total fee.
- Check the FMA fund-finder or the provider's quarterly fund update for a like-for-like comparison.
- Choose a lower-cost fund of the same type — often inside the same provider, which avoids a transfer entirely.
- If you need to change provider, apply online with your IRD number and exact legal name; make sure the old account keeps at least $1,000.
- Diarise the same check for this time next year.
The save is permanent and compounds: $600 a year from a $60,000 balance growing at 5% is worth roughly $20,000 over 20 years. Almost nobody in New Zealand earns that much in 15 minutes of paid work.