The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has beaten its key performance benchmarks, generating a pre-tax return of 11.84 percent after costs for the year ended 30 June 2025.

Total fund size was up $8.4 billion from a year earlier, ending the 2025 financial year at $85.1 billion.

Jo Townsend, CEO of fund manager the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, said that while much of the result was down to the continuing strength of global equity markets, the Guardians’ active investment strategies had also had a positive impact on the Fund’s performance.

“Two numbers are of particular importance to us,” Ms Townsend said.

“The first is net return, or the return over and above the government’s cost of capital.

“For the past year, the 90-Day Treasury bill rate was 4.61 percent, making our net return 7.24 percent - to put it another way, maintaining the Fund this year has made the Crown $5.5 billion better off,” said Ms Townsend.

Ms Townsend said the Fund’s other key benchmark was value add, which expresses how successful the Guardians’ active investment strategies have been.

“We derive that by comparing our Actual Returns with the benchmark returns generated by our Reference Portfolio, which is a notional, passively-managed portfolio of bonds and shares that we believe would meet our mandate,” Ms Townsend said.

“For FY25, our value-added was 0.98 percent. In other words, we added $745 million to the earnings we would have achieved by following a passive, index-tracking strategy.”

Ms Townsend said that while short-term results were a useful check on the portfolio, the Guardians' mandate and purpose - Sustainable Investment Delivering Strong Returns for All New Zealanders - meant the Fund's long-term results told a more important story.

"Over the past 20 years, we have consistently outperformed our long-run expectations, generating an average annual return of 9.92%," Ms Townsend said.

"Certainly, part of that is down to some well-thought-out and well-implemented active investment strategies: during that time, those strategies have generated close on $20 billion more than a passive strategy with the same level of market risk would have returned.

"However, we must also recognise that much of the Fund’s success is due to the exceptionally strong performance of global markets over the past 20 years – despite two once-in-a-generation crises in the Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19.”

Earlier this year, international sovereign wealth fund experts GlobalSWF named the Super Fund the world's best-performing sovereign wealth fund over the past 10 and 20 years.

Ms Townsend said while it was satisfying to have the Fund's results recognised internationally, it was important to remember that different funds operated in different contexts.

"Over the last 20 years our long term investment horizon has allowed us to pursue growth-oriented investment strategies through market ups and downs and to take advantage of short-term volatility and uncertainty," Ms Townsend said.

Ms Townsend said the clarity of the Guardians' mandate was also a significant advantage for the NZ Super Fund.

"We operate with a clear legislative mandate and independence from the government of the day, which allows us to remain focused on the long term and make investment decisions on a purely commercial basis. That has been central to the success we have had."

Fund Performance as at 30 June 2025 (unaudited)

Totals may not equal the sum of underlying components due to rounding. Returns for periods longer than one year are annualised. Table excludes provisions for New Zealand tax.