By Craig Simpson
Each quarter we take an indepth look at the major KiwiSaver providers and provide an over-view of how the KiwiSaver schemes have performed compared to their peers and market benchmarks.
This time around we are also providing an early look at some of the performance numbers for the first quarter of 2013 - and this is a look at the results from both Brook Asset Management and Mercer.
At first glance we see there are no negative returns recorded across any of the time periods.
In the Growth fund category, Brook is the better performer over the past 1yr and 5yr period. Mercer's Growth Fund has performed better in the 2,3 and 4 yr slots.
Funds with a higher weighting to Cash and Fixed Income assets continue to outpeform over the last five years, although the more growth oriented investment strategies are gaining ground rapidly.
Mercer's portfolio of Trans-Tasman shares has outperformed their Global Share selection by over 6% per annum for the last five years.
In general there are many more up arrows than down arrows in the tables indicating continued improvement in returns from the managers.
To calculate these initial returns we have simply used published unit prices and annualised the change in the unit price. For Mercer we have used the appropriate return data provided by the manager.
This enables us to provide you with a sneak peek into the latest results of how your fund may have performed.
The return data is before tax (at the investor's personal tax rate) and after fund management fees have been deducted.
These returns may vary slightly from those published by the managers due to rounding and/or the additional adjustments made by some managers to account for taxable income and tax credits under the Portfolio Investment Entity (PIE) regime.
As more data and information comes to hand, our more complete analysis will be posted on the interest.co.nz website so keep a look out for these over the coming two to three weeks.
The arrows in the table indicate whether the returns are above, below or roughly the same as those returns calculated for the previous quarter (i.e. as at 31 December 2012).
| Mercer (31/3/2013) | 1yr | 2yrs | 3yrs | 4yrs | 5yrs |
| % | % | % | % | % | |
| Cash Fund |
2.9  |
3.1  |
3.6 |
3.6 |
4.4  |
| Conservative Fund |
7.1 |
6.4 |
5.7 |
8.6 |
6.1 |
| Balanced Fund |
9.6 |
6.3 |
6.3 |
11.7 |
4.6 |
| High Growth |
11.9 |
6.0 |
6.7 |
12.2 |
3.4 |
Our previous story covering Mercer's KiwiSaver returns for 31 December 2012 can be found here.
| Mercer Super Trust (31/3/2013) | 1yr | 2yrs | 3yrs | 4yrs | 5yrs |
| % | % | % | % | % | |
| Cash Fund |
2.9 |
3.0 |
3.5 |
3.5 |
4.4 |
| Conservative Fund |
6.4 |
5.6 |
5.3 |
8.7 |
5.1 |
| Moderate Fund |
8.7 |
6.2 |
5.8 |
10.2 |
5.7 |
| Active Balanced Fund |
9.7 |
6.3 |
6.2 |
11.5 |
4.6 |
| Growth Fund |
10.5 |
6.3 |
6.4 |
11.9 |
4.0 |
| High Growth Fund |
11.9 |
6.1 |
6.6 |
13.1 |
3.3 |
| Fixed Interest Fund |
5.6 |
7.1 |
5.6 |
9.2 |
7.3 |
| Shares Fund |
14.6 |
6.5 |
7.2 |
13.4 |
2.9 |
| Trans-Tasman Fund |
24.6 |
12.6 |
10.7 |
14.3 |
7.2 |
| Global Shares Fund |
10.5 |
3.8 |
5.5 |
12.7 |
1.0 |
| Real Assets Fund |
9.2 |
7.0 |
6.7 |
18.8 |
1.3 |
| Brook (31/3/2013) | 1yr | 2yrs | 3yrs | 4yrs | 5yrs |
| % | % | % | % | % | |
| Balanced Fund |
8.1 |
4.3 |
3.3 |
5.6 |
4.1 |
| Growth Fund |
12.0 |
5.3 |
3.9 |
7.8 |
4.8 |
| Conservative Fund* | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
* This fund has not been going for over 12 months.
Our previous story covering Brook's KiwiSaver returns for 31 December 2012 can be found here.
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