Fisher Funds KiwiSaver Review (2026)

What is Fisher Funds?

Fisher Funds is a New Zealand investment manager offering KiwiSaver, managed funds and other investment services.

The Fisher Funds KiwiSaver Plan is a multi-rate portfolio investment entity (PIE) for tax purposes, meaning taxable investment income is generally taxed using each member’s prescribed investor rate (PIR).

The Plan offers investment options ranging from cash through to aggressive growth, as well as its age-based GlidePath service.

What funds are available?

The Fisher Funds KiwiSaver Plan currently has seven funds open to new investment:

• Cash Fund
• Core Conservative Fund
• Conservative Fund
• Default Fund
• Balanced Fund
• Growth Fund
• Aggressive Fund

There is also a CashPlus Fund, but it is closed to new investors.

The funds cover a broad range of risk levels and investment timeframes.

The Cash Fund sits at the lowest-risk end of the range and invests in cash and short-term New Zealand fixed-interest assets.

The Core Conservative Fund and Conservative Fund primarily invest in income assets such as cash and bonds, with smaller allocations to growth assets.

The Default Fund is a balanced fund designed for members allocated to Fisher Funds through the Government’s KiwiSaver default-provider system. It invests in a mixture of income and growth assets and may use an enhanced passive investment approach at times.

The Balanced Fund combines income and growth assets, while the Growth Fund invests mainly in growth assets such as shares.

The Aggressive Fund sits at the highest-risk end of the range and invests predominantly in growth assets. Fisher Funds suggests a minimum investment timeframe of 10 years for this fund.

GlidePath

Fisher Funds also offers GlidePath, an automatic investment service that changes your mix of funds as you get older.

Rather than requiring you to manually switch from higher-risk to lower-risk funds over time, GlidePath gradually changes your allocation based on your age.

In the Fisher Funds KiwiSaver Plan, GlidePath can invest across five funds:

• Cash
• Conservative
• Balanced
• Growth
• Aggressive

It starts adjusting the investment mix from around age 28 and progressively reduces growth-asset exposure as members get older.

There is no additional GlidePath fee. You simply pay the normal fund charges associated with the mix of funds you hold at your age.

Fees

You simply pay the fees of the funds you hold at each age.

Performance

One standout has been the Fisher Funds Default Fund.

For the three years to 30 June 2026, it returned 11.5% per year after fees and before tax. Its one-year return over the same period was 12.5%.

New Zealand currently has six Government-appointed KiwiSaver default providers: BNZ, Booster, Westpac, Fisher Funds, Simplicity and Smartshares.

On the available 30 June 2026 performance data, Fisher Funds’ Default Fund had the strongest three-year annualised return among those six default providers.

That is notable because the Default Fund is also one of Fisher Funds’ cheapest options, with annual fund charges capped at 0.37%.

Past performance, however, does not guarantee future returns.

Active or passive?

Fisher Funds is best known as an active investment manager, but it would be too broad to describe every KiwiSaver option as purely active.

Its investment teams actively research and select investments across much of the portfolio range, while the Default Fund can use an enhanced passive investment style at times.

So the Fisher Funds KiwiSaver Plan is better described as predominantly actively managed, rather than a purely active scheme.

The bottom line

The Fisher Funds KiwiSaver Plan offers a broad range of investment choices, from the 0.44% Cash Fund through to the 1.23% Aggressive Fund.

Its growth-oriented funds are considerably more expensive than the lowest-cost passive KiwiSaver options, reflecting Fisher Funds’ predominantly active investment approach.

The Default Fund is the major exception. Its annual charge is capped at 0.37%, and it delivered an annualised return of 11.5% over the three years to 30 June 2026 — the strongest three-year result among the six Government-appointed default providers based on currently available data.

For investors who do not want to manage their asset allocation themselves, GlidePath also provides an automatic age-based approach that gradually reduces investment risk over time without charging an additional service fee.