The survey has looked at investment performance relative to index since 1993.

It found that investment managers had more often than not beaten the index, and their performance in Australasian equities was more impressive than global equities.

“This shows that Australasian investment products have, on average, outperformed the NZX50 by a comfortable margin and definitely sufficient to, on average, cover management fees.”

Global equities’ average performance was just above the typical fee investors paid.

Since 2011, managers of overseas equities investment had outperformed the index but from 2007 until 2011, their returns were well below.  Australian equities, by contrast, had fewer dips below the index and from 1999 to 2002 and 2005 to 2010 strongly outperformed it.

Last year, the NZX50 returned 26% for the year while unhedged global equities returned 9.5%. Active equity managers achieved average returns of 27.4% and 11.5% respectively.

The New Zealand dollar strengthened over 2012, so hedged global equity funds would have delivered stronger results.

The survey showed that two of five active investment managers beat the NZ equities index last year, 11 of 19 beat the Australasian equities index and six of nine beat the global equities index.

Managers included in the survey include AMP, Brook, BT Funds Management, Harbour Asset Management, OnePath, Milford Asset Management and Tower Asset Management, among others.