New Kiwisaver Ranking Tools Offered for Sale

New Kiwisaver Ranking Tools Offered for Sale

KnowRisk Consulting is pleased to announce the live launch of the www.KnowRisk.biz website, an online web portal offering the ability to rank and sort KiwiSaver Funds by more than 100 statistical and statutory measures. Membership of the website is free requiring only a free registration of email address, username and password to join.Tools are priced at $50 each per download.

Whereas the online KiwiSaver fundfinder tool on the Sorted website+ provides a basic view of what is on offer from the various KiwiSaver Funds in terms of Fees, Returns, and Services, the KnowRisk Consulting offering takes this a step further by providing many of the risk adjusted return and downside risk measures which can provide a more nuanced view of fund risks and performances.

The ranking tool is aimed primarily at broker intermediaries, AFA's and the like, rather than a more retail audience. The tools are not intended to tell anyone which KiwiSaver Fund KnowRisk considers to be the best or most likely to out-perform in future. Rather they provide a wide range of statistics for the user to choose from when ranking funds. Different choices and user preferences will produce different rankings.

Tools offered for sale include;

A KiwiSaver Ranking Tool - This tool provides the ability to rank and sort funds by well over 100 statistical and statutory fields as well as the ability to perform more sophisticated searches along the lines of; "Show me a list of only those funds whose annualised return (CAGR) is greater than 10%, which are larger than $100m and whose fees are less than 1,50% ranked by their Sharpe Ratio's in descending order."

A KiwiSaver Funds Dashboard - This tool provides all the information you need to quickly assess funds relative Return, Risk, Persistence, and Costs. Presented in a Dashboard and Stoplight ( Green = good, Red = bad ) format, the tool allows users to decide on the relative importance of a set of statistics grouped into Risk, Return, Persistence and Costs. By varying the weightings on these - users can come up with their own composite fund percentage score out of 100%. ( Note: in order to make the combination of the scores more intuitive they have not been re-standardized - this means that no fund will score 100% unless all the weight is placed on only one statistic or in the unlikely event that one fund scores 100% in all of the Risk, Return, Persistence and Cost categories. Users should calibrate their expectations accordingly. )

KiwiSaver Fund Reports - Coming soon

The tools are presented in the form of downloadable Excel spreadsheet models which do not include any macros or VBA code. The current review period is for the past 5 years to end 30 June 2015 and the tools will be updated quarterly in arrears. In order to ensure a like for like comparison, only those funds who have data for the full 60 month period are compared. This means that some funds who have less than 5 years of track record, or whom do not provide the performances of their funds in time series format, will not be included. 94 of the 170 KiwiSaver funds currently listed on the Sorted website meet those criteria and are included. All returns are shown after fees but before the deduction of tax. Actual returns received will be lower depending on individual PIR tax rates. All statistics are calculated at the 95% and 5% confidence levels. This means that downside risks will be larger than what is shown at least 5% of the time.

KnowRisk Consulting, CEO, Peter Urbani says," In a recent press article* someone said 'What's needed are websites showing all the KiwiSaver funds performance in tables.', whilst not targeted directly at a retail audience, we hope that this offering goes some way towards meeting that informational need."

"Some people are critical of purely quantitative rankings because they are based on historic data only. Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it is also true that no one has any data from the future. Oftentimes a quantitative statistical model will outperform purely subjective qualitative views although the ideal is a blend of the best of both. While fund holdings and market conditions will change, the behaviour of portfolio managers, their attitudes to risk, and the processes they use to choose investments and manage risk, change far more slowly and are often reflected in the Shape of the probability distribution of the fund especially when compared with those of their benchmarks and peers."

KnowRisk is not a Financial Advisor and the information provided is of a general nature and does not constitute any form of advice. Although the tools can be used to generate a ranking these are dependent on user input choices and selections and do not constitute any recommendation or endorsement of any particular fund. They should ideally only be used by an investment professional or in consultation with one. Investing in funds is inherently risky and investments can go down in value as well as up. Past performance is not necessarily an indication of future performance.

ENDS

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