Murray Harris: The case for higher KiwiSaver contributions

Milford Asset Management’s head of KiwiSaver says KiwiSaver – the country’s voluntary retirement savings scheme which is in its 17th year – is a teenager that’s about to head into adulthood.

“I think it's the right time to have the discussions we were having at the [Financial Services Council] Conference. By and large, providers are pretty well aligned around how we can improve KiwiSaver and make it better for New Zealanders retirements,” Milford's Murray Harris says on a new episode of the Of Interest podcast.

KiwiSaver has become a bigger topic of financial conversation this year and the discussion around potential tweaks and changes to the savings scheme has become more of a ‘when they happen’ and less of an ‘if’ scenario.

At the Financial Services Council Conference in early September, KiwiSaver was a hot debate, with KiwiSaver providers discussing how New Zealanders are simply not saving enough for their retirement and the Retirement Commissioner pointing out that Kiwisaver governance lacks clarity.

Harris tells interest.co.nz that KiwiSaver has been “very successful” in attracting members and the savings scheme doesn’t have a participation problem.

The latest KiwiSaver statistics out of Inland Revenue shows over 3.36 million people are now enrolled in KiwiSaver as of July 2024 and Harris says the participation rates are highest amongst those between the age brackets of 25–34 and 35–44.  

“The participation's really good, but we have an issue around the contribution rate or the amount that people are contributing,” he says.

“Most people are doing 3%, and ... 90% of employers only do 3%. So together, those contributions are not going to be enough to get people to where they need to be for a really comfortable retirement. And I think that's the key issue. That's the real nub of it being very successful in terms of getting people interested and involved, but we're just not contributing enough.”

The Financial Markets Authority released its 2024 KiwiSaver report on Tuesday which showed total KiwiSaver contributions – this includes employee, employer and government contributions – came to $11.2 billion in the March 2024 year. This is up 6.5% from the prior year.

Harris says the KiwiSaver industry has a job to do in terms of educating its members that the current default contribution rate in KiwiSaver, which is 3%,  is a good start – but not enough to get people to where they likely think they're going to be savings wise by retirement.

“Most people think it's 3%, and that's the problem with the settings as they are. You tell people to do 3%, that's what they'll do, and they'll think that's all they need to do. But in reality, it's a lot more,” he says.

The Retirement Commission has called for a higher default contribution rate of at least 4% and says employers should be matching at this level or more. 

Harris says there are also things New Zealand can learn from “the lucky country” – Australia  – when i