FAQs

Those who hope to buy their first house in three or more years time, those near 65 who are saving anyway.

Once signed up to KiwiSaver you cannot opt out (but you can suspend your savings) and mostly you can’t touch your savings until you get to retirement age (currently age 65). However, having your retirement savings ‘locked-up’ is not necessarily a bad thing.

The other side of this question is ‘how much should I spend?’, and this probably has a different answer to how much you would like to spend! Ask yourself what you need/want now and what you need/want in retirement? To help you with this, sorted.org.nz  is a website provided by the Commission for Financial Capability. It is not just a question of whether you can afford to save, but whether you can afford not to save.

Each KiwiSaver scheme will have its own fee structure. For the SuperEasy KiwiSaver Superannuation Scheme there are only two sets of charges.

For each member there will be:

• An administration fee of $4.50 per month.
• Annual fund charges ranging from 0.35% – 0.36% pa of your account balance. This fee covers the management of the Scheme, underlying fund manager fees and in-fund costs.

We have no set up charge or switching fee and unlike many other KiwiSaver schemes pay no agent commission or joining fees.

Every employer is required to match employee contributions for KiwiSaver at a minimum level of 3% of gross salary.

You can change your KiwiSaver provider at any time and as many times as you like. The only rule is that you can only have one KiwiSaver provider at a time. To change there is no need to tell your employer, you just apply to your new provider.

No one knows, because historical returns of an investment fund or an investment manager are not a good guide to the fund’s or investment manager’s future investment performance. However, averaged over a reasonable period, returns on ‘balanced’ funds are expected to be of the order of 5% pa after tax and fees. The corresponding number for ‘income’ funds is 3% to 4% pa and for ‘growth’ funds is 6% to 7% pa. Please note this is not a projection of the expected returns of the SuperEasy KiwiSaver Superannuation Scheme. No rate of return for the SuperEasy KiwiSaver Superannuation Scheme is guaranteed.

It’s easy to join SuperEasy.  Our online application process will only take about 10 minutes.

Apply to join now.

Click here for the application form if your KiwiSaver savings are going to be deducted directly from your salary by your employer, and click here for an application form if you don’t have an employer.

Click here for a payment form to complete and give to your employer (if you have an employer). If you don’t have an employer or you just wish to pay some extra, you do so by paying the IRD directly. The easiest way to do this is internet banking using the tax code KSS, but you can also do it over the counter at any Westpac Branch using an IRD payment slip and tax code ‘KSS’.

Depending on the level of your taxable income investment earnings from your KiwiSaver account will automatically have tax deducted from it at a rate of 28%, 17.5%, or 10.5%.

Nothing at all if that is what you want. However, the default funds of the default providers are mandated to be invested very conservatively, and that could reduce your average net return when compared to investing in a growth fund by 3% pa. Now, 3% pa may at first not seem much, but when repeated year after year the effect builds up. Thus $10,000 invested for 30 years at 3% pa would be worth $24,273, whereas that same amount invested at 7% pa for 30 years would be worth $76,123, which is more than three times as much.

There is no government guarantee for any of the KiwiSaver providers, so investors in the SuperEasy KiwiSaver Superannuation Scheme will be comforted to know that the Auditor General is responsible for its annual audit and that the SuperEasy KiwiSaver Superannuation Scheme Trustees have access to and employ independent actuarial and investment advice and use a range of professional fund managers (currently Harbour Asset Management New Zealand Limited, and ANZ New Zealand Investments Ltd) for managing the investments.

The same as to what would happen to any money you had in a bank account when you died. It will form part of your estate. We suggest if you have not already done so that you write a will, and if your circumstances have changed since your last will was written that you write a new will. Note: on getting married, any will you previously wrote is usually automatically revoked.

The SuperEasy KiwiSaver Superannuation Scheme is one of two savings schemes on offer. The other one is called SuperEasy. This allows members employed by a qualifying employer (basically within local government) extra flexibility with how much of their savings are locked in and to what extent they are relying on the IRD to collect their savings. Both schemes use the same investment funds with the same low management fees.