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Civic Assurance's KiwiSaver results show consistency across conservative portfolios; rough ride in growth strategies

Investing
Civic Assurance's KiwiSaver results show consistency across conservative portfolios; rough ride in growth strategies

The latest data released for KiwiSaver performance as at December 31, 2012 is from Civic Assurance. Our story covering the esults to September 30, 2012 can be found here.

Civic Assurance's KiwiSaver scheme (SuperEasy) is open to Local Government and related company employees and their immediate families.

The latest results show the best yearly returns (to December 31) have been achieved by those in the Age 30 (10.99%), Age 40 (11.06%) and Age 50 (11.13%) Automatic Funds.

The Balanced Fund was the other star performer over the past 12 months providing a return equivalent to the Age 50 Automatic Fund (11.13% per annum).

Over the longer term those in the Age 80 Automatic Fund have had the best and smoothest ride with continued positive annual between 2007 and 2012. There has still been some volatility with returns ranging between 1.3% (2008) and 10.8% (2009) for the year to December, but over all the ride has been relatively smooth compared to the other stategies.

The same observation about return consistency can be said of the Conservative Fund although this portfolio only came into being in April 2008 so missed some of the rough ride which started in mid-2007.

Each strategy offered under the Civic Assurance Super Easy scheme has a responsible investment mandate whereby an average of 10% of the international shares into socially responsible investments. This is quite a unique feature for a main stream diversified portfolio.

SuperEasy continues to outsource the management of the portfolios to ASB and AMP. 

A closer examination of the Automatic Fund asset allocations reveals that the Age 60 Automatic Fund allocation to property is 15% and this is one of the highest allocations to this sector we have seen for what is essentially a conservative portfolio.

Also the exposure to international equities has a split between hedged and unhedged with the Age 20 Automatic Fund having the greatest exposure to unhedged equities. The ratio between unhedged and hedged international equities reduces as the investor ages.

At the time of writing the five year data and unit pricing was not available so we are unable to report on this or calculate the returns. We do however have annual returns for each calendar year to 30 September and these are shown below. The return data is before tax and after fees and is as published by the managers. (No adjustments have been made to take into account those additional fees which scheme providers may charge and which are not included in calculating the fund performance. We do make such adjustments, but they will not be included until the full benchmarking is published.)

Civic Assurance KiwiSaver Scheme
(31 December 2012)
2007
p.a.
2008
p.a.
2009
p.a.
2010
p.a.
2011
p.a.
2012
p.a.
Automatic Fund            
     Age 20 0.0% -19.9% 13.1% 4.6% -4.7% 10.6%
     Age 30 0.4% -19.7% 14.4% 5.4% -3.3% 11.0%
     Age 40 1.2% -17.6% 15.1% 6.2% -2.0% 11.1%
     Age 50 2.1% -15.7% 16.0% 7.0% -0.6% 11.1%
     Age 60 2.6% -11.1% 15.6% 7.2% 0.7% 10.5%
     Age 70 3.1% -5.0% 12.8% 5.8% 2.1% 8.3%
     Age 80 3.5% 1.3% 10.8% 5.2% 2.9% 6.3%
Conservative* n/a 1.2% 6.9% 6.1% 4.9% 6.5%
Income 2.4% -7.5% 11.6% 7.4% 1.9% 9.7%
Balanced 3.7% -21.1% 14.0% 7.3% -0.6% 11.1%
Growth 1.1% -22.1% 14.8% 5.7% -3.8% 10.7%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* The Conservative Fund began in 2008.

More detailed performance reporting can be found here ».

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