Christian KiwiSaver Scheme Review

Christian KiwiSaver Scheme Review

Christian runs 3 KiwiSaver funds open to new members, all sitting at much the same risk level. At 31 March 2026 they held $110.4 million for 2,802 investors.

Charges across the open funds run from 0.80 per cent to 1.50 per cent.

Over five years the Growth Fund returned 6.88 per cent a year while the Income Fund returned 0.95 per cent a year, which is the gap between the top and the bottom of what you can choose from.

What follows is set out in three parts. First, what the scheme actually holds. Second, the fees, risk indicators, and returns for every fund, taken from the Government’s register. Third — and this is the part that matters — whether the return justifies the charge.

How We Researched This Guide

Every number below is read from our own copy of the Government’s Disclose Register, which is the statutory source managers file against. It carries three open funds, all reported as at 31 March 2026.

We also checked the rules behind every KiwiSaver account — contribution rates, the government contribution, and default provider appointments — against Inland Revenue and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

We are not recommending a move in either direction. The point of the exercise is to put the verified numbers side by side, so the decision rests on figures rather than on a brochure.

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Simplicity is a nonprofit KiwiSaver and investment fund manager charging 0.25% p.a. across all six KiwiSaver funds. 100% owned by the Simplicity Foundation, a registered charity. Over 190,000 members. Seven rounds of fee cuts since launch in 2016. 15% of management fees are donated to NZ charities. Founded by Sam Stubbs (ex-Tower Investments CEO, Goldman Sachs).

The Quick Summary (60-Second Version)

Here is the short version before the detail.

• Christian offers three open funds across a single scheme.
• Annual fund charges range from 0.80% to 1.50%.
• The cheapest option is the Income Fund at 0.80 per cent.
• The largest fund by value is the Balanced Fund, with $60.2 million invested.
• The Growth Fund has the strongest five-year record in the range, at 6.88 per cent a year.
• The Income Fund has the weakest five-year record, at 0.95 per cent a year.
• The funds hold $110.4 million between them for 2,802 investors.

What “Christian” Means Here, and Who Can Join

The name is not a marketing label. The New Zealand Anglican Church Pension Board manages and supervises the scheme, which trades as Anglican Financial Care and was set up in 1972 to provide retirement savings for Anglican clergy and lay workers. The scheme itself opened in 2007 as the Koinonia KiwiSaver Scheme and was later renamed. The board is incorporated under the Charitable Trusts Act 1957, so it has no outside shareholders to pay.

Two separate things make this a Christian fund, and they answer different questions. The first is who can join. The second is what the money can buy. Most readers arrive wanting the second and discover the first matters more, so both are set out here.

Who can join

This is a restricted KiwiSaver scheme, not an open one. Membership is limited to employees of organisations whose main activity is Christian mission or ministry, including church-connected charities, and employers the manager approves as having a Christian special character. It is also open to people who state a Christian faith and a commitment to Christian community involvement when they apply, plus their immediate family and dependants.

If none of those describes you, you cannot join, and no amount of research into returns will change that. Check the eligibility rule before you plan a switch. A Christian employer can also select the scheme as its employer-chosen fund, in which case a new employee aged 18 or over joins automatically and has eight weeks to opt out.

What the money is not allowed to buy

The ethical policy works mainly by exclusion. Direct Australasian and international shareholdings are screened against eight categories: human life, alcohol, animal welfare, armaments and defence, fossil fuels, gambling, pornography, and tobacco. The scheme uses an outside provider, Institutional Shareholder Services, to test its holdings against those thresholds every quarter, and it sells any security that fails.

The detail matters more than the list. Companies earning more than 5 per cent of turnover from alcohol, gambling, pornography or tobacco are out, as are those tied to embryonic-destructive stem cell research, to euthanasia or assisted suicide, and to poisons made only for executions. The scheme excludes indiscriminate weapons outright, and conventional weapons above the same 5 per cent line.

Two of the exclusions are softer than readers assume. The scheme excludes coal and tar-sand extractors, but not other fossil fuel companies, on the argument that selling out pushes extraction into private hands and raises energy costs for the poorest. Defence is read through a just-war lens, so non-lethal military equipment is allowed while lethal weapons systems are not.

The scheme is also candid about the limits. Screening covers direct equities only, so externally managed holdings such as international fixed interest, private equity and smart energy sit outside the policy and could include something it would otherwise exclude. The fund may keep companies showing improving corporate responsibility rather than sell them.

In practice this is an ordinary global portfolio with categories removed, rather than money channelled into church ventures. At 31 March 2026 the Growth Fund’s two largest shareholdings were Apple at 3.67 per cent and Microsoft at 1.98 per cent.

Do the fees go to Christian causes?

No, not in the way people usually mean. Your balance and its returns belong to you. The annual fund charge — 1.50 per cent on the Growth Fund, 1.35 per cent on Balanced and 0.80 per cent on Income — pays for running the scheme, is calculated on your daily balance and is paid to the manager monthly. It is not a donation.

What is true is narrower and still worth knowing. The manager is a charitable body corporate established by the Anglican Church, not a company with outside owners, so the charge funds a church-owned provider rather than paying a dividend. The scheme’s own disclosure documents record no gifting of those fees to the church or to mission work.

None of this changes the arithmetic in the tables below. An ethical policy is a reason to choose a scheme; it is not a reason to ignore what the scheme charges or what it has returned.

What You Pay, and What You Get For It

Christian charges an annual fund charge, and it records no separate membership, contribution, establishment, switching, or termination fees for its KiwiSaver scheme. The charge comes out of the fund’s returns rather than being billed to you, so most members never see it leave the account.

It helps to see the charge in dollars. On a $50,000 balance, the lowest charge here, 0.80 per cent, is about $400 a year, and the highest, 1.50 per cent, is about $750. On $100,000, those figures double.

What the Charge Costs at Different Balances

The figures below convert the percentages into annual dollars at three balances. The fee is the only part of the arrangement that doesn't depend on how markets perform.

Over a working life, that difference compounds more than most people expect because the fee is taken every year from a balance that would otherwise be growing.

The Kinds of Fund in This Range

The register groups every fund by type, and the type tells you more about the risk than the name does. Christian spans 3 of those groups, which determines how much choice you actually have.

The risk indicator runs from 1 to 7. It measures how much the fund’s value has moved in the past, not how good it is. A 6 or 7 isn't a warning; it means the fund is expected to fall further in a bad year, and it belongs in a portfolio you will not need to touch for a long time.

Christian KiwiSaver Scheme — the funds

Charges across the open funds run from 0.80 per cent to 1.50 per cent. The strongest five-year figure is the Growth Fund at 6.88 per cent a year, and the weakest is the Income Fund at 0.95 per cent a year.

What the Funds Actually Hold

Fees are only half the picture. The register records how much of each fund is held in growth assets and how much in income assets, and that proportion is the single best guide to how sharply a fund will rise or fall.

The spread runs from 0% growth assets in the Income Fund to 74% in the Growth Fund. The conservative end will scarcely move in a poor year; the aggressive end will fall sharply with share markets and rebound just as sharply. Which suits you depends on when you need the money, not on which has performed better lately.

A Small Range, and What That Means

A scheme with three open funds gives you very little to choose between, and that cuts both ways. You can't pick the wrong option, you won't have a fund you never look at again, and you won't need to rebalance a split across several funds. The structure does the work for you.

The cost is that you cannot adjust the risk to your own circumstances. Most schemes with a wide range let a member in their twenties hold something different from a member in their sixties. Here, everyone in a given fund is in the same place, so the fund has to fit your horizon rather than be tailored to it. If you are in the accumulation years, that usually means the growth option; if you are close to using the money, it usually means the conservative one.

Reading the Returns

Every return shown is net of the fund charge and after tax — the figure a member actually experiences. Every return shown is net of the fund charge and after tax. The strongest five-year average here is the Growth Fund at 6.88 per cent a year, against a range of 0.95 to 6.88 per cent across the open funds.

Compare the columns side by side. One-year figures across these funds span 1.84 to 7.56 per cent, and five-year averages 0.95 to 6.88 per cent. The gap between the two is a reminder that twelve favourable months are not evidence of skill, whereas a five-year record is far harder to produce by accident.

That difference between one strong year and a five-year average is the most useful thing to understand before you pick a fund. It is also why a fund with a short history is harder to judge: there is less to judge.

The table below sets out every figure the register holds for each open fund, over each period it publishes. The longer columns matter most because they are the hardest to produce by luck.

Where Christian Sits Against the Alternatives

On entry cost, Christian is the 26th cheapest of the 29 managers in our KiwiSaver table, with its cheapest fund charging 0.80 per cent. The cheapest manager charges 0.03 per cent and the dearest starts at 4.26 per cent.

Cost is only one side of the ledger. The other is whether the return justifies it, which the five-year column shows. Neither number is predictive on its own, and a stretch that suits shares will always make the share-heavy funds look better than they are.

What You Put In, and What You Get Back

Contribution settings come from legislation, not the provider, so they are identical across every scheme. The difference lies in what the manager does with the money afterwards, and that is where the fee begins to matter.

The default employee and employer rate is 3.5 per cent from 1 April 2026, and it rises to 4 per cent on 1 April 2028. On a $70,000 salary, 3.5 per cent is $2,450 a year from you, matched by your employer, so about $4,900 a year goes into the account before any return.

The Government adds 25 cents for every dollar you contribute, up to a maximum of $260.72 a year. To receive the full amount, you must contribute at least $1,042.86 of your own money between 1 July and 30 June, and employer contributions do not count towards that threshold. If your taxable income is above $180,000 a year, you do not qualify.

Once the money is in, the fund charge applies to the whole balance rather than to each contribution. On a $50,000 balance, the lowest charge here, 0.80 per cent, is about $400 a year, and the highest, 1.50 per cent, is about $750. On $100,000, those figures double. That is the number worth weighing against the returns, because it is charged whether the fund rises or falls.

Questions You Might Have

Which fund am I in?

Your KiwiSaver statement, or the online account you use to manage your savings, will show which fund your money is invested in and how it is split if you hold more than one. Check it first, because the fund determines both the return and the charge.

How much will I pay?

Charges across the open funds run from 0.80 per cent to 1.50 per cent. It comes out of the fund’s returns, not your bank account, so you will not see a separate bill.

Is Christian a default provider?

No. The appointed default providers are BNZ, Booster, Westpac (through BT Funds Management), Fisher Funds, Simplicity and Smartshares, with appointments running to December 2028. Christian is a scheme you choose deliberately.

Can I change funds without changing provider?

Usually yes. Most schemes let you move between their own funds, or change your split, through your online account at no cost, and the change takes effect without affecting your membership or your employer contributions. You only need to switch provider if the scheme itself is the problem.

What happens to a closed fund?

If you already hold a fund that has closed to new members, you keep it and continue to pay the charge shown. Closing a fund stops new money from coming in; it doesn't force existing members out, and it doesn't change your balance.

How much do I need to contribute to get the full government contribution?

You need to contribute at least $1,042.86 of your own money between 1 July and 30 June to receive the maximum $260.72. The government adds 25 cents for every dollar you contribute, and employer contributions don't count toward your $1,042.86. If your taxable income is above $180,000 a year, you do not qualify.

How much will I pay at the default contribution rate?

The default employee and employer rate rose from 3 per cent to 3.5 per cent on 1 April 2026, and it rises again to 4 per cent on 1 April 2028. On a $70,000 salary, 3.5 per cent is $2,450 a year from you, matched by your employer. You can choose 4%, 6%, 8% or 10% instead.

Does switching to or from Christian cost anything?

No. Christian records no membership, contribution, establishment, switching, or termination fees, and switching between KiwiSaver providers doesn't attract a fee in practice. You apply to the new provider, who arranges the transfer.

Do I have to be a Christian to join?

Broadly, yes. The scheme is restricted to employees of Christian mission or ministry organisations, and to people who state a Christian faith and commitment to Christian community involvement when they apply, plus their immediate family and dependants. If you do not meet one of those conditions, the manager will not accept you, regardless of what the returns say.

Does my money go to the church?

No. Your balance stays your money, and the returns are credited to your account. The fund charge pays for running the scheme and is paid to the manager, the New Zealand Anglican Church Pension Board, a charitable body rather than a company with shareholders. The scheme’s disclosure documents record no gifting of fees to the church or to mission work.

What Matters Most

Christian is a manager with a deliberately small range. The fee table above gives the current charge on every fund. The funds are few and easy to keep in mind.

• The Income Fund is the cheapest way in at 0.80 per cent.
• The Growth Fund has the strongest five-year record at 6.88 per cent a year, and it carries the risk that produced it.
• Check which fund you are in before anything else, because it decides both the return and the charge.