Pie Funds KiwiSaver Review (2026)

What is Pie Funds?

Pie Funds Management is a New Zealand boutique investment manager founded in 2007. It specialises in active investing, with investment teams in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Rather than simply tracking market indexes, Pie’s investment teams research and select investments they believe have the potential to outperform over the long term. Its equity funds often use a relatively concentrated, high-conviction approach, although the level of concentration varies between funds. Pie itself notes that this approach can produce higher volatility and periods of underperformance compared with the wider market.

What can you invest in?

The Pie KiwiSaver Scheme has four funds:

• Conservative Fund – primarily fixed interest and cash, with some exposure to shares.
• Balanced Fund – a mix of shares and fixed interest.
• Growth Fund – primarily international and Australasian shares, with some cash and fixed interest.
• Aggressive Fund – primarily international and Australasian shares.

The Conservative, Balanced and Growth funds started in August 2018. The Aggressive Fund is much newer, having launched on 1 May 2025.

Pie’s target asset allocations are roughly 25% growth assets for Conservative, 60% for Balanced, 80% for Growth and 95% for Aggressive, although Pie has wide ranges that allow it to actively adjust these allocations.

Outside KiwiSaver, Pie has nine managed funds.

Fees

The Pie KiwiSaver Scheme is cheaper than Pie's other funds:

Investors under 13 pay no management fee. It is rebated monthly.

Active or passive?

Pie Funds is an active manager across its KiwiSaver and managed-fund range.

Its investment teams select securities and can change their holdings, asset allocations and cash positions based on their view of markets and individual investments rather than simply replicating an index.

Pie describes one of the key features of its strategy as looking for a relatively small number of companies that it believes are mispriced by the market.

Some funds still use market indexes as benchmarks or points of comparison, but that does not make them passive index funds.

The bottom line

Pie Funds is a specialist active manager rather than a low-cost index provider.

Its KiwiSaver Scheme offers four funds ranging from Conservative to Aggressive, with estimated annual fund charges of 0.78% to 1.25% and no current performance fees. Members under 13 have their management fee rebated.

Its wider managed-fund range is more expensive, with most funds requiring at least $25,000 to invest and annual fund charges generally ranging from around 0.83% to 1.92%.

The main reason to choose Pie is therefore its active investment approach. Its investment teams deliberately select investments and adjust portfolios in an attempt to outperform over the long term. That also means investors need to be comfortable with active-manager risk: performance can differ substantially from market indexes, both positively and negatively.