Are You Moving KiwiSaver For Bad Reasons?

Harsh that the AMP KiwiSaver gets singled out here for who has lost KiwiSaver business, when in reality the banks are creaming most of the KiwiSaver transfers from everyone, as they ‘touch’ clients more often than the other providers.

It has nothing to do with quality of KiwiSaver advice as no providers give any, yet AMP can actually refer you to a non-aligned adviser who can give you some; where at best the banks might put you on to one of their in-house Authorised Advisers, but good luck finding one.  ANZ has 70 Authorised Financial Advisers (AFA) for 660,000 members, Kiwi Bank has 1 Adviser for every 50 branches etc.  It’s pretty dire.

People are moving KiwiSaver for usually bad reasons, it will be ‘convenience’ such as seeing your balance on internet banking, which for the life of me I have never seen the appeal unless you are withdrawing your KiwiSaver next week, as you cannot touch it for years.

AMP’s KiwiSaver online access is no better or worse than others, although the adviser end of the system is clunky (though not as clunky as other providers), but for the consumer it’s much of a muchness.

The other reasons to transfer are past returns, which is like picking next year’s Super 15 winner based entirely on this year’s winner.  It’s possible that the past winner will win again, but it’s equally as likely they won’t.

A reminder – past performance has nothing to do with future performance.  In investing it’s all about, “What have you done for me lately?”

Very few are basing their investment plans on the future and access to advice.

Most people we speak to have never had KiwiSaver advice from their provider and are sitting on thousands of dollars, hoping it’s doing the right thing.

There are only 1,800 AFAs in the country and not all do KiwiSaver, so it’s not easy to find an adviser.  But it’s worth it.