HOW … do I find out what Kiwi Saver fund I am in?
AT FIRST blush, this seems like a ridiculous question, as surely everybody knows what fund they are in.
Well, they don’t, fund expert Binu Paul said.
Paul’s done a fair few seminars for employers, speaking to their workers about what Kiwi Saver is and how to get the best out of it.
Paul, who spent years at fund researcher Fund Source and fund manager Tyndall before heading into business for himself, said doing the seminars was an eye- opening experience.
One of the most surprising things he finds is that many people don’t know what kind of fund they are in – cash, conservative, balanced or growth.
And, in fact, many of them couldn’t tell him which fund manager or bank was their scheme provider.
‘‘Through the seminars, I have figured out that around 40 per cent of people don’t know what scheme or fund they are in,’’ Paul said.
There can be many reasons why that can be the case.
Many people have changed job one or more times since Kiwi Saver began.
Many have shifted address. Many lack the literacy, numeracy, experience, and confidence to engage with matters financial.
Paul doesn’t think the 40 per cent ratio betrays a peculiarly financially illiterate populace compared to other countries, but it does seem to be a constant across the workforces of the enterprises he speaks to.
So how do people find out about where their money has gone, or is going?
The good news is, it doesn’t take a master detective like Sherlock Holmes to track a Kiwi Saver fund down.
The simple way for a person to do so is to go online to https://www1. eservices. kiwisaver. govt.nz/ secure/ login .html and plug their IRD number into a search tool provided by the Inland Revenue, which processes the contributions people and their employers make into Kiwi Saver.
That puts the taxman in the unique position of knowing exactly which scheme provider and which fund every single Kiwi Saver in the country is in.
The difficult part starts from there.
Once someone knows the scheme and fund they are, they now have to decide if that fund and provider are right for them, and that’s a whole other story.