New Zealand Super Fund Nears $43B in Assets

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund reached NZ$69.66 billion ($45.43 billion) in assets at the end of 2023, the fund announced. The super returned 16.03% pretax for the year, well above the Treasury bill benchmark of 5.16%, the figure which represents government contributions to the fund.

“The value we create over and above the return on government debt is a very important measurement of our success, so it is satisfying to be able to report that our investment activities have outperformed the Treasury Bill benchmark by [NZ]$6.44 billion during the past year and by more than [NZ]$44 billion during the lifetime of the fund to date,” said Paula Steed, acting CEO of the NZ Super Fund, in a statement.

Steed attributed the funds’ strong returns to the global stock market recovery. Since inception in 2003, the NZ Super Fund has returned an annualized 9.79%. Annualized returns for the past five, 10 and 20 years are 10.24%, 10.11% and 9.82%, respectively. In the last quarter of 2023, the fund returned 7.39%.

“In the short term, returns will vary and sometimes quite significantly,” Steed’s statement continued. “However, what matters to us is performance over time, and over the lifetime of the Fund to date, the Guardians’ active management strategies have earned the Fund almost [NZ]$16 billion more than investing in a passive, index-linked portfolio such as the Reference Portfolio would have yielded.”

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The NZ Super Fund is a superannuation scheme which invests government contributions and their returns to make pension payments to all New Zealanders older than 65.