The Retirement Policy and Research Centre has released a working paper: "Options for dis-saving safely."

It says many middle-income retirees are ill-prepared to manage lump sums and are unable or unwilling to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to manage their assets.

This is likely to become more of a concern as New Zealanders invested in KiwiSaver accumulate larger balances.

The Centre says a particular flaw of KiwiSaver is the absence of any consideration of the decumulation phase of an investor's life cycle. Most people self-manage their retirement income and there are few tools available to help them.

"To self-manage retirement savings, for some people, is a bit like having a pile of car parts and a technical manual dumped in your driveway when you wanted to buy a new car,” the paper says.

“Even with promotion of financial literacy, and online budget tools, it is an unrealistic task for most people to acquire sufficient financial expertise to manage all the investment steps needed to get to their pension goals, and then to manage the distribution of their assets or decumulation over the three phases of retirement.”

It says there is not yet a culture of paying for advice on decumulation, "perhaps reflecting the lack of available products".

The Centre suggests there should be access to approved, independent financial guidance at suitable moments during retirement, with consideration given to whether that should be a default setting for KiwiSavers with significant balances.

Centre research fellow Claire Dale said Kiwis' attitudes to advice would need to change. "It's a shift we need to make in New Zealand to acknowledge that there will be a cost for that advice. But that cost wouldn't be that exorbitant, either."

She said if it cost $1000 to set up a system that would serve an investor for the next 40 years of their life, that should be seen as a good investment. "I'd rather pay than have the financial adviser relying solely on commission."

But she said the biggest problem for financial advisers was that there were insufficient products available to help them.

She said the Government should develop retirement income products to help New Zealanders decumulate, such as a gender-neutral annuity product with a 10-year guarantee.

But she said annuitisation should not be made compulsory in New Zealand.