“I’ve just had two days in Australia visiting a whole raft of super providers over there. If you look at all their promotional material all of them are saying look your compulsory 9.5% is not enough, you’ve got to be saving more. You look at what they’re doing over there to actively engage the population around retirement savings and then you look at what we’re doing an it’s just a wide chasm.”

He said the problem was not just the 40% of members who were not contributing to KiwiSaver. “At least as big a problem is there’s literally millions who are contributing who think they’ve got their retirement sorted and they haven’t.  Thinking 3% plus 3% from your employer is enough is so far short of what we need to do to help New Zealanders.”

He said it was something that the industry needed to take action on. “Government does have a role to play but so does industry, so do media. It’s just a crying need of New Zealanders. We’ve all got a job to do there. But we would be stronger collectively. At the moment it’s piecemeal.”

McLachlan, who previously headed The Co-Operative Bank, said the banking industry was a good example of one sector where participants “compete like crazy on one side of the line” but then would work well together when it was something that was in the industry or the country’s best interests.

“That’s a dynamic you don’t see in investment management.”

But he said action needed to be taken soon. “Every year matters that we’re not doing this. We are already at least 10 years behind Australia and that bulge in the population reaching retirement is so close. We’ve got to do something quickly.”

To read the full transcript, click here