Strongly performing shares helped offset natural disasters and economic uncertainty enabling KiwiSaver funds to post strong returns for the March quarter, according to the Morningstar KiwiSaver Performance Survey.
“The strong returns from sharemarkets resulted in KiwiSaver funds with higher exposures to growth assets (shares and property) outperforming those with more invested in income assets (cash and fixed income) over the March quarter,” said Morningstar co-head of research Chris Douglas.
Morningstar also said the KiwiSaver assets on its database had grown from $954.10 million at June 30, 2008 to $8.07 billion at March 31, 2011, “a phenomenal growth rate for the New Zealand funds management industry.”
Morningstar said the best performing multi-sector funds in the March quarter were ASB KiwiSaver, Fidelity KiwiSaver, Grosvenor KiwiSaver and the Westpac KiwiSaver.
Continuing the trend from 2010, single-sector equities and multi-sector growth and aggressive options were the best performers over the first three months of 2011.
Morningstar said that while three-year figures provide a clearer indicator of fund manager performance, the volatility of the period between April 1, 2008 and 31 March, 2011, meant clear patterns were hard to discern.
However, Morningstar did single out the Fisher Funds Growth KiwiSaver as the best multi-sector fund performer over three years, saying the fund was “streaks ahead of peers over a three year period.”
Among the single-sector options, global share funds were the best performers over the March quarter, with the Fidelity KiwiSaver Options Kiwi the best performer over the quarter and the past three years. Strong performances were also recorded for the SIL KiwiSaver International, SIL KiwiSaver Australasian and Grosvenor International Share.
Within the KiwiSaver sector as a whole, OnePath and ASB remained the dominant players with 45% of KiwiSaver assets between them.