SPIVA New Zealand Explained - The 2025 Results
Every year, S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes the SPIVA report, which confirms what percentage of actively managed funds beat the index they're paid to beat. Our guide explains what SPIVA is, what the latest New Zealand results say, what it can mean for your investing, and must-know facts.
Updated 29 August 2026
Summary
Our analysis below is drawn directly from the S&P Dow Jones Indices SPIVA New Zealand Year-End 2025 Scorecard. We cover:
Know This First: Recap of Index Investing in New Zealand
- SPIVA (S&P Indices Versus Active) has been published since 2002 and is known as the record keeper on the active-versus-passive debate. The New Zealand edition, published every year, measures actively managed funds offered to New Zealand retail investors against their benchmark indices over 1 to 15 years.
- The 2025 report, published in April 2026, confirms that a majority of actively managed funds underperformed across all reported categories. In particular, 74% of Global Equity funds missed their benchmark in 2025 - and over 10 and 15 years, 100% of them did, hedged or unhedged.
- The report's data confirmed that 47% of actively managed funds across all categories were merged or liquidated within 15 years. This is relevant given that the issue isn't just whether the fund will beat the index, but whether it will exist after 10 or more years.
Our analysis below is drawn directly from the S&P Dow Jones Indices SPIVA New Zealand Year-End 2025 Scorecard. We cover:
- What SPIVA Is and Where It Came From
- The 2025 New Zealand Results
- Understanding Fund Survivorship and What it Means
- What SPIVA Doesn't Tell You, and What it Means For Your Money
- Frequently Asked Questions
Know This First: Recap of Index Investing in New Zealand
- New Zealand's index fund story starts earlier than most people realise - Smart (known previously as Smartshares) listed the country's first index-tracking ETF back in 1996. But index investing stayed a niche for two decades, until two newcomers made low fees and index funds their focus.
- Simplicity arrived in 2016 as a not-for-profit manager running index-based KiwiSaver funds at a fraction of the fees New Zealand were used to paying, and Kernel followed in 2019, building NZ-domiciled index funds as its entire business rather than a sideline.
- Between them, they turned fees into a competition the rest of the industry has had to join - and moved index investing from the margins into the mainstream of KiwiSaver and everyday portfolios.
What SPIVA Is and Where It Came From
The S&P Indices Versus Active scorecard began in the United States in 2002 with a simple premise:
The New Zealand scorecard compares actively managed equity and bond funds offered here against the relevant index:
How the SPIVA report keeps track
- Fund managers claim they can beat the market, so somebody should keep score.
- S&P Dow Jones Indices has done so ever since, across dozens of countries, using a published methodology and Morningstar fund data.
The New Zealand scorecard compares actively managed equity and bond funds offered here against the relevant index:
- The S&P World Index (NZD) and its hedged version for global equity funds
- The S&P/NZX 50 New Zealand equity funds
- The S&P/NZX Composite Investment Grade Bond Index for bond funds.
How the SPIVA report keeps track
- The SPIVA reports the percentage of funds that underperformed over 1, 3, 5, 10, and 15 years, and it counts funds that closed along the way rather than quietly dropping them.
- SPIVA is useful to show the life of funds because we believe a lot of fund marketing suffers from survivorship bias - the fund returns you see in marketing belong to the funds that survived, and the failures vanish from the comparison.
- SPIVA starts with every fund that existed at the beginning of the period, which is why its long-run numbers look so much harsher than the reality of the industry's marketing, which omits these closed funds.
The 2025 New Zealand Results
The table below is our redrawing of the scorecard's headline exhibit - the percentage of actively managed funds underperforming their benchmark over periods ending 31 December 2025.
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices, SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard, Year-End 2025.
Results Summary
NZX50 Funds and Performance
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices, SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard, Year-End 2025.
Results Summary
- Over 10 and 15 years, 100% of global equity funds underperformed - every single fund, hedged and unhedged alike.
- In 2025, the S&P World Index gained 18.9% in New Zealand dollar terms, while actively managed global equity funds averaged 15.4% on an asset-weighted basis, leaving 74% of unhedged funds and 86% of hedged funds behind their benchmark.
NZX50 Funds and Performance
- 2025 arguably should have been an active manager's year. The giant shares at the top of the NZX 50 lagged while mid and small caps surged, and 63% of the index's constituents beat the index itself - the highest proportion in at least a decade.
- When most shares beat the index, the odds of picking winners were the best they've been in ten years.
- The S&P/NZX 50 Index gained 3.3% (or 4.1% with imputation credits), while 65% of actively managed New Zealand Equity funds underperformed it.
SPIVA New Zealand Explorer
The percentage of actively managed funds that underperformed their benchmark index, for periods ending 31 December 2025. Pick a category and timeframe.
Fund category
100%
Timeframe
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices, SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard, Year-End 2025. Data to 31 December 2025. Underperformance is measured after fund fees, before tax. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
How to Read a SPIVA Scorecard
Four key measurements explain and underpin every SPIVA report, which we explain in simple terms:
Four key measurements explain and underpin every SPIVA report, which we explain in simple terms:
- The underperformance rate: The headline percentage is the share of funds that underperformed the benchmark over a period. It's counted by fund, not by dollar - a $10 million fund and a $2 billion fund each count once.
- Count versus dollars: Because of that, SPIVA also reports asset-weighted average returns, in which large funds count for more. The two can tell different stories - 2025's New Zealand Equity category is a perfect example, covered below.
- Survivorship: Funds that merged or wound up during the period are included in the starting count. A fund that closed after five bad years still counts against the 15-year record - as it should, because its investors lived those years.
- Equal footing: Fund returns are measured after fund fees but before taxes, against an index that has no fees. Fees are the hurdle active managers must clear, and the scorecard shows how often they clear it.
Understanding Fund Survivorship and What it Means
In 2025 itself, fund survival was a non-issue - just one of 118 funds across all categories failed to make it through the year, and the fund universe actually grew as new global equity funds launched.
Stretch the horizon, and the picture changes completely. Across all categories, 16% of funds were merged or liquidated within 10 years, and 47% within 15. Roughly half the funds an investor could have chosen 15 years ago no longer exist - and S&P notes those closures significantly affect the long-run underperformance rates, because funds rarely close after a run of good years.
This reframes the whole exercise. The question most investors ask is "will my fund beat the index over the long run?" SPIVA says the question before that one is "will my fund still exist?" - and over 15 years, the answer was no about half the time.
Stretch the horizon, and the picture changes completely. Across all categories, 16% of funds were merged or liquidated within 10 years, and 47% within 15. Roughly half the funds an investor could have chosen 15 years ago no longer exist - and S&P notes those closures significantly affect the long-run underperformance rates, because funds rarely close after a run of good years.
This reframes the whole exercise. The question most investors ask is "will my fund beat the index over the long run?" SPIVA says the question before that one is "will my fund still exist?" - and over 15 years, the answer was no about half the time.
SPIVA New Zealand: Fund Survivorship Explorer
Before asking whether a fund will beat the index, ask whether it will still exist. The percentage of actively managed funds merged or liquidated over each period ending 31 December 2025.
Fund category
Timeframe
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices, SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard, Year-End 2025 (Survivorship of Funds). "Did not survive" means the fund was merged or liquidated before the end of the period. Data to 31 December 2025. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
What SPIVA Doesn't Tell You, and What it Means For Your Money
SPIVA looks at data around active and index funds. It is not a guide or report on anything else. However, there are some things to be aware of should you read it in detail:
- It says nothing about advice: SPIVA measures fund selection, not financial advice. A good financial adviser's value - structure, tax, retirement income and drawdown planning - sits outside the SPIVA report entirely.
- Averages hide the winners: When 85% of funds miss the index over 15 years, the other 15% beat it - real funds, run by real managers, that earned their fees for a decade and a half. The report doesn't name them, and the hard part was never whether they exist. It was knowing, back in 2011, which ones they would turn out to be.
- An index fund won't shelter you in a downturn: Tracking the index means getting all of it. The S&P World's 18.9% rise in 2025 went straight through to index investors, and the next 20% fall will too - no manager stands between you and the market, because that's the design. SPIVA makes a case about fees and the odds of beating the market. It makes no promise about what the market does.
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MoneyHub Founder Christopher Walsh explains what SPIVA means for your money:
"SPIVA is really a report about fees. An active fund charging 1.25% has to beat the market by a full percentage point every single year just to match an index fund charging 0.25% - before it delivers you anything extra. The scorecard measures how often funds clear it; in New Zealand, the answer is not often, and less often the longer you wait. To see how SPIVA applies to you, this is what I suggest:
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Christopher Walsh
MoneyHub Founder |
Frequently Asked Questions
Isn't SPIVA biased given S&P sells the indices?
S&P earns licensing fees every time an index fund tracks one of its indices. Three key facts make the SPIVA report widely read, cited and trusted:
- The methodology has been public since 2002, so anyone can pull it apart.
- The fund data comes from Morningstar, not from S&P.
- Academic research with no connection to S&P keeps finding the same pattern in active fund returns.
Does this cover KiwiSaver funds?
Not directly - SPIVA measures managed funds sold in New Zealand within its four categories; it does not run a separate KiwiSaver league table. The test it applies is the one that matters for KiwiSaver though: did the fund beat a fair benchmark after fees? You can compare your KiwiSaver fund's performance to its benchmark by reading the KiwiSaver fund update.
Where can I read the full report?
S&P publishes it for free - you can download the SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard 2025 version on the S&P website. A new edition goes live around April the following year, and we update this guide and the explorer above when it does.
