Enhancing our cash returns

Effective 1 December 2025, MAS has made changes to the Cash and Cash Equivalents asset class, to include short-term fixed interest investments (maturing within 12 months). This change seeks to enhance returns and value to members in a low-interest rate environment. These investments will sit alongside other income assets like cash accounts and term deposits and apply to all MAS Scheme funds with a benchmark allocation to this asset class1, including the Cash Funds.

Why are we making this change?

Interest rates have fallen sharply over the past year or so. The Reserve Bank’s Official Cash Rate dropped from 5.5% in mid-2024 to 2.25% today. That’s great news for mortgage holders, but challenging for savers, especially with inflation at 3.0%.

The liquidity of our Scheme funds will remain unchanged, and we don’t expect the volatility of the funds to change significantly. You can see the most recent Risk Indicator in the latest Quarterly Fund Update for each fund. Our goal is simple, deliver better returns for our members.

Changes to the MAS Cash Fund description

As part of this change, on 1 December 2025 we changed the description for the MAS Cash Fund where we outline how the fund will invest. The change applies to the MAS KiwiSaver Scheme, MAS Retirement Savings Scheme and MAS Investment Funds. The new description is ‘Invests 100% in income assets. Can invest in a range of cash, cash equivalents and short-term NZ fixed interest assets.’

The changes have been made to the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for each MAS investment Scheme and the PDSs can be found at mas.co.nz/investments.