Kia ora koutou and welcome to our quarterly update.
We have closed out another successful Sorted Money Month campaign, which focused on building the resilience of New Zealanders with a single call to action around encouraging emergency savings. It was great to see so much energy and commitment from our National Strategy partners throughout August and I’m very grateful to those who participated.
Along with the huge amount of effort that went into bringing Money Month to life there’s been plenty of other activity over the past quarter.
Last week we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Financial Advice New Zealand to improve access to professional financial advice, boost financial capability, and build consumer confidence. The initial five-year partnership formalises a shared commitment to improving financial wellbeing across life stages, with a particular focus on connecting Sorted with Financial Advice New Zealand’s Find an Adviser Directory.
In June we released a brand-new Sorted tool, the Retirement Navigator. This tool addresses a common dilemma for those entering retirement – how not to spend too much and run out of money or spend too little and unnecessarily compromise quality of life. We unpacked the tool in our latest Connection Series webinar in July.
Following the Government’s announcement that financial education will become a core element of curriculum from 2028, we have been busily working alongside the Ministry of Education to coordinate the financial education ecosystem and develop implementation guides which will help schools and providers navigate this change. We have established a Financial Education Provider Advisory Group to help shape the guide’s design and provide an overview of what curriculum-aligned resources are available to support each phase.
We also released several research papers in preparation for the 2025 Review of Retirement Income Policies, which is focusing on research relating to KiwiSaver and other savings, trends analysis with a 25 year horizon, the experiences of women in retirement and how New Zealand retirement policies compare globally. Read on to learn more about the research findings – these will help inform the recommendations we make to the Government later in the year.
I enjoyed meeting with the Minister for Women Hon Nicola Grigg in August to discuss some of opportunities to improve retirement outcomes for women. I gave her an early preview of some of the findings from a new report compiled by MartinJenkins for the Retirement Commission, which provides a life-course analysis of women and retirement income. I look forward to sharing more about this at the next National Strategy Connection Series event this week.
Finally, we are pleased to have locked in a date for our next National Strategy conference, which will be held on 26-27 May in Auckland. Earlybird tickets will go on sale Wednesday 1 October. We hope to see many of you there!
Jane Wrightson, Mana Ahungarua/Retirement Commissioner
Catch up on the latest National Strategy Connection Series events
Building financial capability through
financial education in schools
Guiding New Zealanders
through retirement
Recent research
2025 Review of Retirement Income Policies
Every three years, we’re required to undertake a Review of Retirement Income Policies (RRIP). We’ve been undertaking research and analysis over the year to help shape key recommendations we will put to the Government to improve New Zealand’s retirement income system. This has included research relating to KiwiSaver and other savings, emerging trends and how these will play out over the next 25 years, the experiences of women and the self-employed in retirement, spending down retirement savings and how New Zealand’s retirement policies compare globally. All of the papers published so far can be found on our website and below covers some of the key releases this quarter.
New report highlights growing retirement savings gap between self-employed and employees
We released a report with Hnry this month, revealing hundreds of thousands of self-employed New Zealanders risk retiring financially vulnerable - as they contribute to KiwiSaver at less than half the rate of employees, with many missing out on government contributions.
The report draws on insights from Hnry’s sole trader platform, the Retirement Commission’s Financial Sentiment Tracker, administrative data on KiwiSaver contributions, and Stats NZ’s integrated data infrastructure.
Today’s over-65s offer insights for tomorrow on the realities of spending in retirement
We released the second of two reports on older people’s voices in July, exploring income, decumulation behaviour and expenditure in older age. The findings show that more than half of survey participants felt at least somewhat confident that they’ve saved enough money to live on comfortably throughout their retirement; however, one in five said they weren’t at all confident.
Of the participants who had financial assets such as KiwiSaver, investments, savings and/or shares in Māori land, only 71% reported withdrawing or receiving money from them.
Budget 2025: KiwiSaver changes could see funds last 30% longer
Following the Budget 2025 news of changes to KiwiSaver, we released a series of papers providing a full analysis of what the impacts will be for contributing members. The first paper found that the changes should increase retirement savings for around 80% of contributing KiwiSaver members, despite the reduction in government contributions or its removal entirely for those earning over $180,000.
Looking back on the quarter
Wrapping up Sorted Money Month for 2025
Thank you to all our National Strategy partners who were involved in this year’s Sorted Money Month and helped to leverage our collective impact! This public awareness and engagement campaign runs annually every August. This year, we focused on building the resilience of New Zealanders by encouraging emergency savings. The peace of mind having an emergency fund brings is measurable, and research shows that starting, even with only a small amount, significantly boosts people’s financial resilience and wellbeing.
Our financial sentiment tracker revealed that 44% of the population currently do not have an emergency fund in place, a clear threat to their financial resilience. However, those who have recently set up an emergency fund are nearly three times more likely to feel optimistic about their future. Click here to read the full report.
New Sorted Retirement Navigator
A brand-new Retirement Navigator tool was launched in June to help users plan their retirement spending. The first of its kind, this tool addresses a common dilemma – how not to spend too much in retirement and run out of money or spend too little and unnecessarily compromise quality of life. In six weeks, the tool had over 10,000 sessions. We partnered with the Retirement Income Interest Group (RIIG) of the New Zealand Society of Actuaries to develop the tool, which helps New Zealanders nearing or already in retirement to feel more confident about their financial future.
Financial education to become a core element of curriculum
We welcomed the announcement in late April that financial education will be embedded as a core element of the refreshed social sciences curriculum for Year 1-10 students, alongside its inclusion in maths and statistics.
We're working with the Ministry of Education to create a more coordinated approach across providers. This includes developing a national financial education strategy, with implementation guides outlining the resources and programmes available and where they align to curriculum requirements. This is an excellent opportunity for the financial services community to formally contribute, for the curriculum division of the Ministry to access expert advice, and for us to help connect and learn from two sectors that we already work with.
We have also established a Financial Education Provider Advisory Group including the Ministry, multiple other organisations across the industry and financial education providers with a keen interest in seeing a clear approach to financial education in schools. The Financial Education Implementation Guides will be available for the new school year.
Connecting with school leaders
Our Sorted in Schools team recently attended the National Association of Secondary Deputy and Assistant Principals (NASDAP) Conference in Wellington. We presented a workshop on financial education and seized the opportunity to talk to attendees about the Financial Education Implementation Guides we are developing.
Sorted campaign with MediaWorks and the Pacific Media Network
We recently collaborated with MediaWorks and the Pacific Media Network to deliver a targeted Sorted media campaign for Pacific audiences, focused on budgeting and debt management. This included an interactive weekly budget competition with Mai FM and a feature on the Pacific Media Network sponsored breakfast news. The campaign achieved over 1.9 million impressions across billboards, radio and social media.
New resources for Sorted at Work
We have been working on a comprehensive content review for several key Sorted at Work courses and a brand refresh. We also created a new video resource for the two-day investing programme, which will also be available on the Sorted website as an additional resource for the general public. Demand remains strong for the programme, with 59 courses delivered to 24 different organisations this year.
Sorted Kāinga Ora guides whānau to home ownership
The Sorted Kāinga Ora programme has had another successful year in FY24/25. This programme is run in partnership with Te Puni Kōkiri, delivering eight-week courses to whānau across the country to help achieve their housing aspirations. There has been significant demand for these workshops throughout the year, with participants travelling from around the country to learn the Sorted Kāinga Ora programme and teach it in their communities. We trained 39 facilitators in 2024/25 and hosted two webinars providing an overview of content change for facilitators.
New retirement villages disputes resolution scheme proposed
A proposed new retirement villages complaints and disputes resolution scheme has been developed by the New Zealand Dispute Resolution Centre. We asked the Centre to undertake a comprehensive investigation into what a new scheme could look like, building on previous studies and feedback from various stakeholders.
Dates for your calendar
National Strategy for Financial Capability Conference - Auckland
26-27 May 2026
Tickets on sale 1 October