ANZ spokesman Stefan Herrick said, In a statement, the bank is disappointed to be dropped as a default provider but is looking forward to continuing to make KiwiSaver a success and helping New Zealanders prepare for a more secure financial future.

"We believe active management will deliver better outcomes for investors over time.

"We have some of the best performing funds, our fees are near the median for default providers and we have strong environmental, social and corporate governance policies.

"One of the main reasons we were appointed at the beginning was because as New Zealand’s biggest financial services provider, trust and reach were critical to it being successful and we’re proud of playing a part in that.

"We’ll now be working through plans to transition out of being a default provider on 1 December," the statement says.

Last month the head of ANZ's KiwiSaver business, Craig Mulholland, announced he was leaving the business.

For many AMP's ousting was fully expected as the business had poor returns, a high number of members sitting in default funds and it recently announced its investment philosophy was changing from active management to passive. 

AMP Wealth Management said, in a statement, it remains committed to KiwiSaver, despite not being reappointed as a default provider.

AMP Wealth Management chief executive Blair Vernon says while the company is disappointed not to be reappointed "...we deeply value our default KiwiSaver clients, our current default portfolio represents less than 7% of our total assets under management and around 3.5% of total revenue so this decision doesn’t have a major impact on our business or our commitment to KiwiSaver".

Vernon says the company continues to invest in the ongoing strengthening of its offer to members.

"This is underpinned by the current renovation of our AMP KiwiSaver Scheme through the appointment of BlackRock as our key investment manager.

"This transition will be complete in the coming weeks and we expect it to result in even greater value for money, stronger fund performance, and further support our clients’ sustainability aspirations," says Vernon.

ASB, who has a reasonably proactive corporate communications arm, has yet to make a statement.

Like ANZ its head of KiwiSaver, Jonathan Beale, recently left the business to join Tower.