Stubbs made the comment at yesterday's Tower quarterly media briefing in Auckland, in response to a question about the recently reported survey on performance fees by Harbour Asset Management.

The survey raised concerns about the way some New Zealand equity managers calculated these fees, with investors possibly paying performance fees for below-market performance.

Stubbs said Tower charges performance fees on the same basis as Harbour for the small number of products where it has them.

He said "as a general rule" he agreed with the findings.

"If you have a performance fee so the headline rate looks low you're doing it for the wrong reason," he said.

"We should be prepared to accept low income in bad years if we accept good income in better years."

Stubbs said the "devil is in the detail" with performance fees, and said he looks forward to changes to KiwiSaver reporting requirements that will allow investors to compare "apples with apples" in that regard.

"If there's any lies or mis-truths about performance fees they're all going to come out in the wash.  I think there will be some very interesting revelations that come out of it."

Stubbs also spoke out about "mischievous" reporting by media on the fees issue, saying KiwiSaver fees are actually very low.

He referenced a Morningstar survey that found fees for KiwiSaver balanced funds are much lower (0.93%) than their Australian counterparts (1.76%) and almost as low as for wholesale investors (0.85%).

"I'm looking forward to some more rational analysis on this in future."