A while back I came across this thing called Kiwisaver, which based on how it was being advertised, guessed that it was something retirement-related. In my previous life of working in the UK I took one look at personal pensions and decided to opt out even before I had left the presentation room, but this is New Zealand where (I hope at least) things are not utterly screwed up. I have to say that the reasons I opted out previously also apply to Kiwisaver.
The mechanics of paying into the scheme are much in line with UK pension schemes: you pay in between 3% and 8% of salary, and your employer pays in an additional 3%. The government in turn pays in an initial tax-free $1000, and gives you a 50% matching tax credit for contributions up-to $1,042.86 annually. So far so good.
The problem is what happens with that kitty before you retire, and herein it its fatal flaw: It is a defined contribution scheme where the major factor in determining how much you get out being stock market performance. OK, there are also some various fees and taxes, but they are an aside to a central point: You can end up with less money than you put in. Investment funds, apart from the creaming off of management fees based on questionable bench-mark performance metrics, are also atrocious at investing. Much of the speculation on the stock market is a zero-sum game, and behemoths such as pension funds frequently lose out to the tightly-run ships of private equity.
So yes, I will be opting out of Kiwisaver.