When you deposit funds into (invest in) a KiwiSaver or investment fund, your money buys units of that fund. Units are a share of the fund’s assets (e.g.shares and bonds). The number of units you get when you make a deposit depends on the prevailing unit price. This is set every working day and is based on the total value of the fund’s assets divided by the number of units outstanding.

For example, if on Monday a fund has a total of 8 million units outstanding and the total value of the fund’s assets is $80 million, Monday’s unit price is $10 per unit. Anyone buying or selling units in the fund on Monday will receive that unit price - so if an investor deposits $1,000 at Monday’s unit price they will receive 100 fund units in their investment account.

There is a two working day delay for our KiwiSaver and Investment Fund unit prices. This is to ensure full and accurate valuations of the fund’s assets. We need to wait for all transactions to be completed and reconciled, and for overseas investment markets in different time-zones to close so we can confirm an accurate value for all of the fund’s assets. An accurate unit price is very important to ensure all investors who make deposits or withdrawals are treated fairly.

If you make a fund deposit on a given working day, we need to wait two working days for the unit price for that day to be calculated and available - we can then confirm your deposit and how many units have been added to your investment account.

KiwiSaver deposits (i.e. “contributions”), and Investment Fund deposits (i.e  “subscriptions”) are investments into a fund to add to your overall investment. For each contribution or subscription, you receive additional fund units in the respective fund.

For deposits, we use the unit price on the day your funds are identified as being cleared on the fund’s bank statement. So if you make a payment from your bank account on Monday, the funds will normally appear on the fund’s bank statement the next working day (Tuesday morning in this example). Provided you’ve used the correct payment references identifying who the investor is and what fund you’re depositing into, it will be processed at Tuesday’s unit price. Remember that we need to wait two working days before Tuesday’s unit price is calculated, so we can only confirm your deposit (and in particular the number of fund units you receive) on Thursday morning.

Once the deposit has been received, identified and allocated against the appropriate fund we can’t reverse this transaction or return the funds.

You can think of a withdrawal (sometimes called “redemptions”) as cashing in your units and taking out your investment. We cancel the appropriate number of fund units in your account to reflect the value of your redemption and pay the net proceeds, after accounting for any tax that may be owing at that time, into your nominated bank account.

Valid withdrawal requests that are received before 5pm on a working day are processed at the unit price for that day. Valid withdrawal requests received after 5pm on a working day, or on a weekend or public holiday, are processed at the unit price for the next working day. So if you submit a valid withdrawal request before 5pm on Monday (assuming it’s a working day), we will process the withdrawal at Monday’s unit price. Remember that we need to wait two working days before Monday’s unit price is calculated, so we can only work out the number of units to cancel on Wednesday morning. When that is done, we can make the payment to your nominated bank account, which might take up to a day to show in your account.

Once a valid withdrawal (redemption) request is received, accepted and processed by Simplicity, we are not able to cancel this request.

A switch is when you move money from one fund to another - it’s a withdrawal from your current fund and a deposit into your new one.

That means if you submit a switch request through the member app on Monday night at 9pm, the switch will be processed at Tuesday’s unit price (assuming Tuesday is a working day). Remember that we need to wait two working days before Tuesday’s unit price is calculated. We can only work out the number of units withdrawn from your old fund and add them to your new fund on Thursday morning.