2017 was great for KiwiSaver members who chose balanced-growth funds, but only if your fund was managed well. Nine of 14 funds shone, for others the results were dim

By David Chaston

Depending on your tolerance for risk, a growth-balanced fund might be a worthwhile alternative to your default KiwiSaver.

The best Balanced KiwiSaver fund has returned 75% more than the best performing Default fund since 2008. That is a gain of almost $6,000 since inception for our benchmark member - after all taxes and after all fees. In the past three years, that advantage has been more than 40% more. It demands your consideration.

This is an assessment of how Balanced KiwiSaver funds are performing and their track record since inception. (It is not an assessment of how they will do in the future.)

Balanced funds involve taking more risk than Conservative, Default, or Moderate funds.

The 'balance' referred to is a balance of growth allocations.

KiwiSaver fund managers for this category are doing well.

In fact, 2017 returns have been far above those we have seen in previous years, even outshining the past few years.

The market benchmark based on the category allocations / mandates (see second table below), sets a 2017 return standard of +11.4% net of all taxes and all fees. There are fourteen funds in the category and nine of them exceeded that, one equalled it, but two couldn't meet it. The two that failed were the ASB Moderate Fund and the Booster KiwiSaver SRI Balanced fund. Barely matching the standard was the AMP Moderate Balanced fund. All the rest outshone the base standard and some quite impressively.

This category has mandates that average 26% in fixed income exposures and 74% in equity exposures.

The best two performing funds in this category, the Nikko Asset Management managed funds at Aon and AMP, generated handsome 2017 returns over +18%, and they also shine in both our since-inception and last-three-years metrics.

For Balanced or Balanced-Growth type funds there is more volatility in returns as they traditionally have higher exposures to equities or property than the more conservative funds. Sometimes, some types of bond funds deserve a higher risk assessment too. Although the losses in capital may be experienced more frequently, over the long run your capital value should grow more quickly than conservative funds.

In assigning our risk categories to the full range of KiwiSaver funds, we took these things into consideration:

- the target asset allocation (that is, where the manager plans to invest the funds),
- the current asset allocation,
- the exposure to smaller or mid sized companies,
- liquidity of the underlying investments,
- exposures to derivatives or alternative assets and
- potential for wide variability in monthly and annual returns.

We are not using the fund manager's label or naming of the fund type in this 'Balanced' category; we are using our own independent assessment.

This better performance is essentially down to the skill of the manager to select specific investments that outperform the benchmarks established for this category. Clearly some managers do better than others over the long run. And it is not only the specific investments, it is how they structure their overall allocations.

Here is a review of the current allocation structures, in the same order as the table above.

For explanations about how we calculate our 'regular savings returns' and how we classify funds, see here and here.

There are wide variances in returns since April 2008, and even in the past three years, and these should cause investors to review their KiwiSaver accounts, especially if their funds are in the bottom third of the table.

The right fund type for you will depend on your tolerance for risk and, importantly, on your life stage. You should move only with appropriate advice and for a substantial reason.