OnePath has seen off competition from Fisher Funds and Milford Asset Management to be named Morningstar KiwiSaver Fund Manager of the Year.
The OnePath general manager funds, David Boyle, said he was delighted with the win.
“It’s a fantastic moment in the sense that the OnePath brand has been recognised with this award, particularly given the criteria that Morningstar used, which was quite extensive, particularly from a customer experience perspective.”
The Morningstar Australasia co-head of fund research, Chris Douglas, said the award winners, “have all shown themselves to be outstanding stewards of their investors’ capital.”
Morningstar praised OnePath’s transparent KiwiSaver options, broad selection of fee choices and strong performances.
“Morningstar’s analysts consider OnePath the best all-round solution for New Zealander’s retirement savings needs,” the company said.
Boyle said the wider criteria used to assess the award and the fact that KiwiSaver is more of a mass-market product made their success especially pleasing.
He said that during the awards ceremony Douglas said Morningstar had, “extended the criteria to include not only the performance of the scheme, but the transparency of fees, the quality of regular updates, the education material, the website, the tools and content on that website to assist KiwiSaver members with information and transparency, [these] were key factors.”
While Boyle stressed the importance of the wider factors around the OnePath offering, he also acknowledged the importance of fund performance.
“We take performance as a given, we have to deliver a level of performance and it needs to be consistent and consistently good relative to peers and the market. That’s what we strive for as a funds management provider as well as a KiwiSaver provider,” he said.