ANZ still dominates KiwiSaver FUM despite mediocre returns

But Milford Asset Management gained the most FUM in the year ended March.

Source: Milford Asset Management

One of the things that has annoyed me about the Financial Markets Authority's ongoing campaign against fund managers charging excessive fees was that such judgements are too often divorced from how fund managers perform.

Yes, of course, the FMA was absolutely right in forcing fund managers to disclose their fees in ways that make it easy for prospective and existing savers to compare one manager with another.

And all too often fund managers use benchmarks that aren't appropriate – Fisher Funds was the classic example when it used 90-day bank bills and other interest rates as benchmarks for share funds.

In founder Carmel Fisher's favour, she did start using interest rate benchmarks at at time when the New Zealand yield curve was steeply negative so 90-day bill rates were much higher than normal for an extended period.

At that time, from about 2003, it was possible for retirees to put all their nest eggs into short-term fixed-interest vehicles to achieve decent longer-term returns and Fisher figured it was reasonable to promise to aim for better than fixed interest with a share fund.