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It may be the country's biggest KiwiSaver manager, but ANZ's returns are not near top-of-the-table, new data shows.
Morningstar has released its latest KiwiSaver survey, which shows the highest-performing fund in the year to December was Koura's bitcoin fund, up 142 percent over a year.
The lowest performer was Kernel's clean energy, down 17. 4 percent.
Conservative funds returned an average 1 percent in the quarter and 7.4 percent over a year.
Moderate funds were up 1.3 percent in the December quarter and 8.7 percent in the year.
Balanced was up 2.8 percent in three months and 13 percent over the year, growth 3.3 percent in the quarter and 15 percent in the year, and aggressive 5 percent in the quarter and 19.1 percent in the year.
ANZ has the largest share of the KiwiSaver market, with $22 billion of the total $121.9 billion under management.
But over 10 years its performance is 12th of the conservative funds, sixth among moderate, 14th among balanced and 10th among growth.
Over one year, it was 18th among conservative funds, 21st in moderate, 32nd among balanced funds, 25th and 26th among growth funds, and 16th among aggressive.
Kernel Wealth founder Dean Anderson said that was an issue.
"New Zealand's biggest KiwiSaver provider was last in all the core diversified funds during 2024, except one where it was second-to-last. A continuation of astoundingly poor results from ANZ…
"Well over half a million Kiwis' retirement is suffering as a result, many who are too complacent to review and look elsewhere, or who simply believe the big brands can be trusted."
A spokesperson for ANZ said all of its schemes had positive returns in the 12 months to 31 December, after fees. But they acknowledged the bank's performance relative to benchmarks was "challenging".
"This was primarily driven by our external manager lineup in international equities," the spokesperson said.
"Market performance has been unusually concentrated in a small number of large international technology stocks in recent times. For our actively managed portfolios our underlying managers hold only part of the market, so have not benefited from all of the performance of those stocks.
"In addition, some of the companies that our active managers selected have underperformed due to stock-specific risks - risks that are unique to an individual company as opposed to the broader market.
"The world is changing rapidly, and investment markets are no different."
Anderson said the clean energy fund was only 0.5 percent of Kernel's funds under management.
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