Hi all,

A bit of a conversation starter about weather it is worth using brokers for Kiwsaver as I am interested to hear peoples thoughts.....

Ive had Swain Woodham manage my Kiwisaver since I was in it at the age of 18 (I'm 34 now). Kiwisaver has not been something I have not thought about too much, I assume my balace is healthy for my age ($110,000) and figured there was nothing much else to consider - apart from fees, but balancing the price of fee's of the top providers vs their returns looked like a number crunching nightmare I preferred to steer clear of.

Last night I had my advisor from Swain Woodham around home for a review of my wife and I's kiwisaver, and he has switched our investment companies saying the new ones we are with will provide better returns etc. We are happy with the changes made and have peace of mind everything has been looked at and things are going well for us. 

The only thing that does not sit to easy with me is the fee of having Swain Woodham as our brokers, they charge 0.75% of our fund balance per annum, but apart from providing advice when we need it and a review once per year if we want it, that seems like easy and good money for them - for example my balance of $110,000 gives them just over $800 of my money per year.

I did not go in to this to much as I did not want the uncomfortable conversation with the broker about "is it really worth it", as I imagine their default reasoning would be their expert advice and making sure we are getting value for money. I figure we could possibly approach another company to take over without a broker and then not have to pay that 0.75%, but with our limited knowledge we could loose more in returns than loosing the 0.75% per year to Swain Woodham.

Long story short, what does everyone here think? would you pay 0.75% for the expert advice once per year and having the reassurance your Kiwisaver is performing well, or is it easy enough to do yourself earning the same returns as you would as if you had expert advice?

It would be great if it was the investment companies paying the brokers a commission from their pockets rather than mine, like mortgage brokers work, but then they may be inclined to go to the companies paying more to brokers rather that what is best for their client, at least paying a percent of your balance they have it in their best interest to increase your balance as much as possible, therefor increasing their returns?