Minister of
Commerce and Consumer Affairs
Hundreds of thousands
of New Zealanders will be significantly better off in
retirement following changes to the default KiwiSaver
scheme, Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Commerce and
Consumer Affairs Minister David Clark said today.
The
new default provider arrangements, which will take effect
once the terms of the current providers ends on 30 November
2021, mean those joining the scheme at 18 could have an
extra $143,000 at retirement through lower fees and higher
investment returns.
Around 381,000 members are
currently in the default fund they were automatically
allocated to when they started a new job, because they did
Despite losing its default status, AMP Wealth Management chief executive, Blair Vernon said the company was committed to KiwiSaver. “While we’re disappointed not to be reappointed, and we deeply value our default KiwiSaver clients, our current default portfolio represents less than 7 per cent of our total assets under management and around 3.5 per cent of total revenue so this decision doesn’t have a major impact on our business or our commitment to KiwiSaver.
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AMP has lost its KiwiSaver default provider status. ANZ spokesman Stefan Herrick said: “While we’re disappointed we haven’t been appointed a default provider, we’re looking forward to continuing to make KiwiSaver a success and helping New Zealanders prepare for a more secure financial future.”
Wednesday, 12 May 2021, 1:25 pm
A range of
radical solutions are now a step closer to boosting the
agricultural sector thanks to the Food, Fibre and Agritech
Supernode Challenge. Prize winners were named at the
Showcase on 11 May.
Clarospec, a tool to measure lamb
product quality, from AgResearch was the overall winner in
the On-Farm Systems category and took out the Research grand
prize.
KarbenFibre, an environmentally friendly
battery technology to optimise and reduce the cost of flow
batteries using natural fibres was named overall winner in
the Value-Added Product category and runner-up in the
Research
category.
The
grand prize in Enterprise was won by Genesmith with their
2021-05-12 05:36:01 GMT2021-05-12 13:36:01(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
WELLINGTON, May 12 (Xinhua) The New Zealand government moves to reduce merchant service fees, estimated to save New Zealand businesses approximately 74 million NZ dollars (53.6 million U.S. dollars) each year.
Businesses merchant service fees are charged by banks when customers use a credit or debit card to pay. Pre COVID, EFTPOS has been the main way Kiwis pay for goods and services, and this is fees-free for retailers. Increasingly, however, consumers are favoring contactless debit and credit cards, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister David Clark said in a statement on Wednesday.