National Capital founder, Clive Fernandes, is pitching the group’s new KiwiSaver ratings service as a potential research tool for other advisory firms.Fernandes said the National ‘KiwiSaver value for money report’, published for the first time last week, may find favour with many external financial advisers who have limited research resources to draw on in the sector.

“I know some advisers use the Morningstar KiwiSaver report to select funds for their clients but that only has fee and return data,” he said.

The National methodology ranks almost all KiwiSaver funds on an old-school A-to-D scale across six factors including performance, fees, organisational strength and ‘ethical’ investment capability.

Data sources include the quarterly Financial Markets Authority (FMA) KiwiSaver updates along with qualitative research provided by investment consultant, MyFiduciary, and in-house analysis.“We think other advisers will find our report a useful source for giving KiwiSaver advice,” Fernandes said.

National launched in 2018 under the-then robo-advice exemption, offering a technology-based KiwiSaver selection system that initially recommended a handful of schemes – collecting ongoing commissions for the service. However, Fernandes said the business now has about 14 KiwiSaver schemes on its platform.

Since inception the group has accrued about $95 million in KiwiSaver funds under advice across almost 2,000 clients. I n 2021 the independent advisory business, Saturn Portfolio, bought National but kept the brand intact. Chaired by NZ financial services stalwart, Craig Stobo, Saturn has six financial advisers while National contributes a further three to the group.

Fernandes said National provides regularly quarterly updates to its KiwiSaver clients with the option of an annual review – either through the online system or in-person advice.

“About half of the clients will do a review every year,” he said.

In addition to providing fee-paying advice services, Fernandes said anybody can use the National KiwiSaver comparison tool to select options based on simple criteria such as fees.

The new National KiwiSaver ranking report, to be produced quarterly, excludes restricted schemes and five other providers: Consilium  KiwiWRAP; Craigs Investment Partners; InvestNow; Aurora; and, Kernel Wealth.