Is KiwiSaver advice free in New Zealand?
Yes. MoneyTalks, Citizens Advice Bureau and Sorted are free, and Solid Steele KiwiSaver Advice in Christchurch gives free KiwiSaver sessions with no obligation. What differs is how each is funded, and what each is allowed to do.
That last part is the bit that usually gets skipped. Four services can all be free at the point of use and still be four completely different things. One will sit with you and sort a budget out. One will explain your rights and point you at the right agency. One will hand you good tools and let you work it out yourself. Only one of them can look at your actual KiwiSaver account, compare it against other providers, and then go and move it for you.
This page lays all four side by side, honestly, including what each one cannot do. If a financial mentor or a free calculator is what you need, use it. It is free, it is good, and you should not pay anyone for it.
Where to get free KiwiSaver help in New Zealand
Four free options, and the honest limits of each. Three of them are not trying to sell you anything at all, which is worth knowing before you start.
| Service | What it costs | What it can help with | What it cannot do | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MoneyTalks | FreeGovernment funded, delivered through the network of community financial mentoring services. | A free, confidential helpline and free financial mentors. Budgeting, debt, talking to creditors, hardship, benefit and entitlement questions, and working out what you can realistically afford to put away each payday. A mentor will stay with you over several sessions. | It is a financial mentoring service, not a KiwiSaver advice service. It will not recommend a fund or a provider for your circumstances, will not compare schemes against your goals, and cannot action a transfer on your behalf. | Anyone under real financial pressure. If money is tight or debt is the live problem, this is the right first call and it beats any investment conversation. |
| Citizens Advice Bureau | FreeA charity, largely volunteer staffed, funded by councils and community grants. | Free, confidential information on almost anything: your rights, entitlements, government forms, disputes and where to go next. Bureaux across the country, including Canterbury, plus a phone line. Good at explaining how KiwiSaver works in general terms. | It gives information, not financial advice. It will not tell you which fund to hold, will not compare providers for you, and cannot move your KiwiSaver. | Someone who wants the rules explained in plain language, or whose KiwiSaver question sits inside a wider problem such as tenancy, employment or an entitlement. |
| Sorted | FreeRun by Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission and funded from the public purse. | Plain-English guides and free online tools, including calculators and KiwiSaver fund comparison tools you can run yourself at any hour. Nobody is selling you anything, and the quality is high. | It is general information rather than advice about you. It does not know your timeframe, your risk tolerance, your other assets or your plans, it will not give you a recommendation, and it cannot action a switch. | Self-directed people who enjoy doing their own research and want a trustworthy starting point before they talk to anyone. |
| A KiwiSaver financial adviserFor example Solid Steele KiwiSaver Advice. | The session is free30 minutes, no obligation to act. If you implement a recommendation, how the adviser is paid depends on the provider. See How Cam is paid. | Regulated financial advice about your situation. Looking at the account you actually hold, comparing providers and funds across the wider NZ market against your timeframe and your tolerance for a bad year, giving you a recommendation, and then handling the paperwork if you decide to act. Annual check-ins after that. | Not a budgeting or debt service, and not a hardship service. It cannot promise a return, and it cannot give you a useful recommendation without the information about you that makes the advice personal. | Someone with a balance that now matters, a date they need the money, and a preference for a recommendation over a reading list. |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Help thinking it through, or someone who can actually move it
Free services in New Zealand split fairly cleanly into two groups, and knowing which group you are talking to saves a lot of time.
Budgeting and mentoring services help you think. A financial mentor at MoneyTalks, or a volunteer at a Citizens Advice Bureau, will help you understand the rules, work out what you can afford, and decide what you want to do. They are on your side, they want nothing from you, and for a great many people that is exactly and completely the right service. What they will not do is tell you that your balance is sitting in a fund built for someone twenty years older than you, because that is a recommendation about a financial product and it is not what they are there for.
A KiwiSaver financial adviser can compare providers and action a switch. Giving regulated financial advice in New Zealand means working under a Financial Advice Provider licence, meeting a code of conduct, carrying a registration a stranger can look up, and being accountable for the recommendation afterwards. That is what allows an adviser to say "this fund, this provider, for these reasons" and then submit the transfer. Sorted's calculator cannot do it. A mentor cannot do it. It is a different job, not a better one.
The practical test is simple. If your question is "how does this work?", a free service will answer it better than anyone. If your question is "is my money in the right place, and if not, where should it go?", that is advice, and advice needs someone authorised to give it.
Plenty of people need both, in that order. Sort the budget out with a mentor, then have the fund conversation once there is something to put away.
More on what a session actually involves is on the KiwiSaver adviser Christchurch page.
How Cam is paid
"Free" deserves an explanation, so here is the whole thing in plain language.
The session is genuinely free and there is no obligation to act. You can have the conversation, take the recommendation away, do nothing at all, and owe nothing. That is not a trial period or a teaser. A fair number of sessions end with Cam telling someone their KiwiSaver is already in the right place.
If you implement a recommendation, how Cam is paid depends on the provider. Under most panel arrangements the provider remunerates Solid Steele directly and there is no additional Solid Steele adviser fee charged to your account. Kernel Wealth, Kōura Wealth and Smart KiwiSaver support advised-service arrangements under which Solid Steele charges an adviser fee in addition to the fund's underlying management fee: 0.25% p.a. with Kernel Wealth and Smart KiwiSaver, and 0.30% p.a. with Kōura Wealth.
That payment is a conflict of interest. The honest thing to do with a conflict is name it rather than bury it. Cam compares KiwiSaver providers and funds across the wider NZ market, including whichever scheme you are in now, and a recommendation may well be to stay exactly where you are. Where a change is right, he implements it through a selected implementation panel of ten KiwiSaver schemes and options: Booster, Fisher Funds, Generate, Kernel Wealth, Kōura Wealth, Milford, Pathfinder, QuayStreet, SBS Wealth and Smart KiwiSaver.
The provider-by-provider detail, including what each arrangement pays and how the conflict is managed, is set out in the disclosure statement. It is worth two minutes before a first meeting with any adviser, not just this one. Asking "how do you get paid?" is a completely reasonable opening question and you should ask it every time.
Free KiwiSaver help in Christchurch
All four options are available to Cantabrians, and three of them are national.
- MoneyTalks is a national free helpline and will connect you to a financial mentor working in the Canterbury region.
- Citizens Advice Bureau has bureaux across Christchurch and Canterbury. You can walk in, ring, or use the national line.
- Sorted is online, so it is the same service wherever you live.
- Solid Steele KiwiSaver Advice is based in Christchurch. Cameron Steele meets clients face to face across the city and the wider Canterbury region, or online if that is easier. Sessions are free either way.
What is genuinely local is the timeframe. Christchurch has historically been a more accessible market to buy into than Auckland or Wellington, so a Canterbury first-home buyer is more often three or four years away from a deposit than ten or fifteen. A short runway is exactly what makes fund choice urgent rather than academic, and it is the kind of question a general calculator handles poorly because it does not know your settlement date.
Solid Steele KiwiSaver Advice
111 Early Valley Road, Lansdowne, Christchurch 7672, New Zealand
022 657 8665 |
cam@solidsteeleadvice.co.nz
Cameron Steele is a financial adviser registered as FSP1010212, giving advice under the licence of Solid Steele Advice Limited (FSP1010211). Both numbers are public and you can look either of them up. More detail on meeting in person, and on what a session covers, is on the KiwiSaver adviser Christchurch page.
Free KiwiSaver advice, answered
Is KiwiSaver advice free in New Zealand?
Yes. Free KiwiSaver help is widely available in New Zealand. MoneyTalks and Citizens Advice Bureau give free budgeting help and general information, Sorted publishes free guides and calculators, and KiwiSaver financial advisers such as Cameron Steele at Solid Steele KiwiSaver Advice offer a free 30-minute session with no obligation to act. What differs between them is how each is funded and what each is allowed to do. Only a financial adviser can give you a personal recommendation about your fund and provider and then action it for you.
Where can I get free KiwiSaver advice in Christchurch?
In Christchurch you can call MoneyTalks for free budgeting help, visit a Citizens Advice Bureau for free information, or work through Sorted's free tools yourself. For KiwiSaver specifically, Cameron Steele at Solid Steele KiwiSaver Advice is a Christchurch-based financial adviser (FSP1010212) who runs free KiwiSaver sessions in person across Canterbury or online anywhere in New Zealand, with no obligation to change anything at the end.
How do KiwiSaver advisers get paid?
It depends on the provider. Sessions with Cameron Steele are free and there is no obligation to act. If you implement a recommendation, under most panel arrangements the provider remunerates Solid Steele directly and there is no additional Solid Steele adviser fee charged to your account. Kernel Wealth, Kōura Wealth and Smart KiwiSaver support advised-service arrangements under which Solid Steele charges an adviser fee in addition to the fund's underlying management fee: 0.25% p.a. with Kernel Wealth and Smart KiwiSaver, and 0.30% p.a. with Kōura Wealth. The provider-by-provider table is in the disclosure statement.
Do I have to pay for KiwiSaver advice?
Not for the session. A KiwiSaver session with Cameron Steele is free, takes about half an hour, and carries no obligation to change anything afterwards. MoneyTalks, Citizens Advice Bureau and Sorted cost you nothing either. What is charged to your account after that depends entirely on which scheme you end up in, and the provider-by-provider detail is set out in the disclosure statement rather than summarised on a marketing page.
Written by Cameron Steele, Financial Adviser (FSP1010212).