New capital market rules will allow KiwiSaver providers to invest in private assets and “leverage” the $120 billion currently sitting in KiwiSaver funds.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says New Zealand’s “relatively shallow pools of capital” are hard on businesses trying to raise money for investment purposes.
In response, the Government will be rolling out a “package of reforms to unlock capital”.
This will include changes to KiwiSaver rules so KiwiSaver funds can be more easily invested in unlisted assets.
“Currently, most of these funds are parked offshore in foreign stock exchanges, generating little good for New Zealand’s economy. Similarly, only around 3% is invested in unlisted assets, compared to around 16% of Australian superannuation funds,” Bayly says.
“Leveraging the money held in KiwiSaver to invest in unlisted assets, particularly domestic ones – such as transport projects, renewable energy generation or large- scale housing developments – would be a win-win.”
KiwiSaver funds are allowed to invest in unlisted assets but the rules around it lack clarity.
Bayly says the current regulatory settings don’t “clearly enable” KiwiSaver fund managers to invest in private – unlisted – assets and it is difficult for KiwiSaver fund managers to use appropriate liquidity risk management tools.
Currently, members can withdraw their investments within 10 days which makes investment in illiquid, private assets challenging. Illiquid assets are assets not easily converted into cash.
NZX is ‘unattractive’
The Government will also be rolling out a “series of adjustments” to reduce the costs and barriers faced by companies which are listed or wanting to list on the NZ stock exchange (NZX).
This will improve the “competitiveness and attractiveness” of the NZX, according to Bayly.
He says the “unattractiveness” of NZ’s capital markets is why only a handful of companies have chosen to list on the NZX in recent years.
The Government plans to introduce more flexibility around how companies provide prospective financial information.
“A particular concern is the cost associated with providing forward-looking financial information – known as prospective financial information – as part of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and the burden of complying with the climate-related disclosures regime.
Bayly says NZX companies are required to publish forward-looking prospective financial information in order to list on the NZX.
The costs are “onerous” and range from 5% to 15% of total Initial Public Offering (IPO) costs, he says, reaching as high as several million dollars.
Companies will be able to choose to not prepare prospective financial information, but will need to outline the reasons why or to prepare prospective financial information in a form of the company’s choosing.
Bayly says these changes would align with requirements in Australia, remove unnecessary costs for issuers, and make it easier to list on the NZX.
“We are moving at pace to implement these changes with the intention that they are in place in early 2025 prior to the IPO season,” he says.
Bayly says he also wants to propose changes to the climate disclosures regime “to better align” with international peers like Australia which he describes as NZ’s closest economic partner.
The first statements under NZ’s new climate-related disclosures regime were lodged this year and Bayly says the first year of reporting highlighted “significant problems” with the regime.
Public feedback will be sought on potential changes like raising the NZX-list company reporting threshold from the current $60 million in market capitalisation to $550 million in market capitalisation instead. This change would kick in from early 2026 if it gets approval.
Bayly has also suggested that alternatively, the NZX-list company reporting threshold could be raised to $550 million in market capitalisation from early 2026 – and then the threshold could be reduced down to $250 million in early 2028.
Public consultation will also look at raising the investment scheme manager reporting threshold from $1 billion in total assets under management to either $5 billion in total assets under management or $5 billion per scheme.
18 Comments
A half-good story though: the change of rules will only allow KiwiSaver providers to invest in private assets. Why not mandate providers to invest a proportion of fixed income into BTR/community housing instead as a start?
The larger providers cream high fees without actually having to make the funds work hard. Market reviews into the scheme have reported for years that the big-5 (ANZ, ASB, Westpac, AMP and Kiwi Wealth - only one of which is majorly Kiwi-owned) seldom appear as the highest performing investments and also lag smaller providers in socially responsible investing, value for money (lower fee) and member engagement.
Read my full comment. Kiwis aren't currently getting the most of their funds under management anyways.
This is clearly part of a broader trend showing Kiwis have a generally poor awareness of money, markets, etc. as reported by most market regulators and advisors (ComCom, FMA, EA, Morningstar, etc.).
I for one definitely do not want *my* money invested in the pathetically poor return on assets typically available in New Zealand, let alone "mandated" into "socially responsible" investing i.e. communist theft of private property.
Thankfully platforms like InvestNow allow a degree of individual control over where your KiwiSaver funds are allocated.
Only problem is that KiwiSaver accounts can be raided at any time and completely cleared out to buy a house, which creates ongoing liquidity issues for the fund. Unlike Australia, where fund managers know that money is locked away and who can long term model their liquidity requirements.
Kiwisaver isnt being used for retirement savings, its being used as a house deposit scheme with a much shorter timeframe. $1.4B in Kiwisaver funds was withdrawn for housing this year alone. This is incompatible with long term investments in unlisted assets.
There will be many who have already bought a house and have then built up another position in KS. I've got about 5x what I had in mine when I withdrew as a FHB.
Most people are in a default fund so I suspect while trivial, the reality is most people are lazy/uninvolved and don't move their balance around.
The average age of the FHB is 37 years. So thats ~19 years of Kiwisaver funds being taken out for the purchase of a house. That doesnt leave you much time to build up any significant retirement savings.
People dont appreciate that it is compounding and not contributions which is what increases retirement savings. A person who takes out 10 years of savings and then starts over for the next 40 years will still have far less in retirement than the person who has the same 10 years of savings in a scheme but who then never contributes again for 40 years.
People dont appreciate that it is compounding and not contributions which is what increases retirement savings.
No offense bro but you're making assumptions here about asset markets move, which you will hear from many financial advisors. Let's just take a comparison of gold vs the SPX in the 1970s.
Gold: Approx 1323.80%
S&P 500: Approx 17.14%
For that 10-year period, I would have been far better off not locking into some super scheme. "IMO". Similarly with rat poison, DCA'ing for the past 10 years would far outperform any scheme run by bureaucrats and ticket clippers.
that also assumes the property you purchase will have a 0% return over 40 years which is highly unlikely.
Correct. There are periods in modern Anglosphere history where house prices didn't really appreciate in any meaningful way for 20-30 years. But not now.
Considering that the money supply is reliant on the Ponzi (and vice versa), the ruling elite have found themselves in the almighty mess they've created. So it's fairly safe to assume that they will find ways to continue a steady stream of conversion of base money into broad money. But by doing so, they're going to make their independent-interdependent economies more fragile than ever before.
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