Sharesies Joins the Total World Fund Club
18 Oct, 2026
Well, that didn’t take long.
Back in April, I wrote Which providers offer a Total World Fund in NZ? because I was frequently asked where New Zealand investors could research and locate the type of simple, low-cost, globally diversified fund that I, Rebel Finance School, JL Collins, and others in the financial independence community regularly talk about.
At the time, the blog I wrote looked at Smart and InvestNow. Sharesies gave investors access to other providers’ Total World Funds (at a higher fee) rather than offering its own, and Kernel didn’t yet sell one.
Just six short months later, that article needs updating.
Kernel launched its Total World Fund in mid-2026, and now Sharesies has launched its Sharesies Global Shares Fund.
And judging by my inbox, plenty of you noticed. I’ve had several emails asking variations of:
“Is this basically another Total World Fund?”
“How does it compare with Smart, InvestNow and Kernel?”
And inevitably:
“Should I switch?”
That last question isn’t one I can answer for you, but I can update the information and look at how the new Sharesies fund compares with some of the other broadly diversified global share funds I’ve previously written about.
Just a reminder: I’m not a financial adviser, and I have no financial qualifications. This article is general educational information and a factual comparison of publicly available fund features. It is not a recommendation to acquire, sell, hold or switch any particular investment. This article is not sponsored or paid content. Some providers mentioned have commercial relationships with The Happy Saver, which are disclosed on our website. None had any input into or advance sight of this article.
First, a very quick recap
I’m not going to explain the whole idea behind Total World investing again because I’ve already written about it several times. One example is: I have stopped buying the US 500. Well, sort of.
But, put simply, one approach used by many passive investors is to hold a broadly diversified fund that buys ‘all the companies’, rather than trying to predict which country, industry or company will perform best next. A fund of this type can give an investor exposure to thousands of companies across developed and emerging markets, including large, medium and small global companies.
It was the simplicity of index investing that first grabbed me when I read JL Collins’ The Simple Path to Wealth. Over time, my own interpretation of his approach evolved from owning the US market to owning the world, something I wrote about earlier this year in JL Collins Goes Global – And Why That Feels Familiar.
The approach Jonny and I have chosen for ourselves is to use a Total World approach for both our KiwiSaver and our ETF investments outside KiwiSaver. We don’t pick stocks; we more or less just buy all the stocks. These are share funds, which means their value goes up and down minute by minute as they track global share markets. The funds discussed here are also unhedged, so movements in the New Zealand dollar can affect returns.
So when another provider launches something that appears to offer similarly broad global exposure, like you, I’m interested in understanding how it works.
Four funds I’m comparing
For this update, I’m comparing four New Zealand funds that share many of the characteristics I’m interested in: broad global equity exposure, passive management, developed and emerging markets, exposure to large, medium and small companies, and low fees.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every global share fund available in New Zealand, and inclusion in the comparison is not a recommendation to invest in any of them.
Scroll sideways to compare all four funds →
| Feature | Smart Total World ETF | InvestNow Foundation Series Total World Fund | Kernel Total World Fund | Sharesies Global Shares Fund |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| When did it start | 2015 | 2022 | 2026 | 2026 |
| NZ PIE | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Passive | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Developed + emerging markets | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Large, mid + small companies | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unhedged | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Annual fund charge | 0.40% | 0.06% | 0.12% | 0.10% |
| Buy/sell fee | Selling cost depends on broker | 0.50% in / 0.50% out | None | None |
| Additional plan fee | None | None | Plus or Premium membership required | None |
| Index/benchmark | FTSE Global All Cap | FTSE Global All Cap Unhedged to NZD Net Tax (US RIC) | FTSE Global All Cap | Morningstar Global All Cap Target Market Exposure |
Fees and fund details are correct as of October 2026 and can change. Always check current information directly with the provider, including the Product Disclosure Statement. Always a fun read, as it tells you more about the risks of the investments, the timeframe, and how the fund works.
It’s not quite the same index
Smart, InvestNow and Kernel ultimately give investors exposure based around the FTSE Global All Cap Index.
Sharesies instead names the Morningstar Global All Cap Target Market Exposure Index as its benchmark.
When I first saw that, my immediate question was probably the same as yours: what’s the difference?
My interpretation is that the two indices are trying to achieve a broadly similar objective, although they use different rules to get there.
Think of the FTSE Global All Cap Index and the Morningstar Global All Cap Target Market Exposure Index as two shoppers sent into the same supermarket with the same broad goal: fill the trolley with almost everything on offer. Each shopper follows slightly different rules about exactly what goes into the trolley and how much of each item to buy, so the contents won’t be identical.
The Morningstar index is designed to cover approximately 99% of the investable global share market and includes developed and emerging markets and large, medium and small companies.
The FTSE Global All Cap takes a similarly broad approach.
Different index providers use different rules to determine which companies and countries are included, when companies enter or leave an index, and how everything is classified and rebalanced.
But both are designed to provide very broad exposure to the global share market.
How many companies are we actually talking about here?
I wanted to put a number around “the whole world,” and that is where things became a little less straightforward. But, like the rest of this blog, I’ll try to keep it simple. As much for me as for you.
As at 31 July 2026, the FTSE Global All Cap Index contained 10,126 stocks. Vanguard’s Total World Stock ETF, called VT, tracks that index using a sampling approach and actually held 10,068 stocks on the same date. It doesn’t need to own every company in the index to track it closely.
The Sharesies side is less clear, so feel free to comment below if you have more information.
Its stated benchmark, the Morningstar Global All Cap Target Market Exposure Index, aims to cover about 99% of the investable global share market, but I haven’t been able to find a reliable current figure showing exactly how many companies are in that index.
Sharesies says its fund invests in an underlying index fund and gives investors exposure to “thousands of global companies across developed and emerging markets”, but the publicly available information I’ve found doesn’t let me confidently put an exact company count beside it.
So I’m not going to pretend I know something I don’t.
What we do know is that both approaches are designed to provide extremely broad global diversification; that is, they hold a whole lot of companies.
Whether an index ultimately contains 8,000, 9,000 or 10,000 companies isn’t something I personally lose sleep over.
And then there are the fees
Fees matter and are a key part of the bigger picture, and I suspect this is what is generating many of the emails.
The current annual fund charges are:
InvestNow: 0.06%
Sharesies: 0.10%
Kernel: 0.12%
Smart: 0.40%
An annual fund charge is a percentage of the value of your investment that you pay each year for the management and operation of the fund. For example, if you have $10,000 invested in a fund charging 0.10%, that's approximately $10 a year. If the fund charges 0.40%, it's $40 a year. And if the fund charges 2%, it's $200 a year. As your investment balance grows, so does the dollar amount you pay in fees. And importantly, these charges apply whether your investment goes up or down in value.
Annual fund charges aren't necessarily the total cost of investing. There can also be transaction fees, buy/sell fees, and platform charges, depending on the provider.
InvestNow has the lowest annual fund charge of these four, but each has a different fee structure, so the annual percentage alone doesn’t tell you the total cost.
I know. I know. It’s confusing when each provider has a different fee structure, and we are trying to compare them! But get used to it because each has its own reasoning.
InvestNow currently charges 0.50% when money enters its Foundation Series Total World Fund and another 0.50% when money leaves. Its annual fund charge is 0.06%.
Sharesies charges 0.10% annually and no buy or sell fee for this fund.
Kernel charges 0.12%, with no transaction fee, but access to the fund currently requires a Plus ($50) or Premium ($150) annual membership (or part thereof).
Smart charges 0.40% annually, and selling costs can vary depending on which share broker you use.
So simply ranking the funds by their annual fund charge doesn’t capture every cost.
Let’s put some dollars around that
I could create an elaborate spreadsheet assuming somebody invests exactly $100 every week for 30 years, but I don’t know anybody whose investing life actually works like that. Ours certainly hasn’t.
Income changes. Expenses change. You might invest heavily for a few years and then back off. You might receive and invest a lump sum. You might eventually sell some investments to spend the money, as Jonny and I have done from time to time. Fees change, funds change, providers change, and life has an annoying habit of refusing to follow the spreadsheet.
But some basic maths (my favourite kind) is still useful for putting these percentages into perspective.
So let’s deliberately use an unrealistically tidy example: $100,000 invested as one lump sum and left completely alone, earning an assumed 7% a year before the fees shown below.
For InvestNow, I’ve included the current 0.50% fee when the money goes in. For Kernel, I’ve included a $50 annual Plus membership. For Sharesies, I’ve used its 0.10% annual charge. For Smart, I’ve used 0.40%.
Here’s a rough illustration:
$100,000 lump sum
| $100,000 lump sum | After 10 years | After 20 years | After 30 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| InvestNow – 0.06% + 0.50% in | After 10 years $194,600 | After 20 years $380,700 | After 30 years $744,800 |
| Sharesies – 0.10% | After 10 years $194,900 | After 20 years $379,800 | After 30 years $740,200 |
| Kernel – 0.12% + $50/year | After 10 years $193,800 | After 20 years $376,400 | After 30 years $731,400 |
| Smart – 0.40% | After 10 years $189,500 | After 20 years $359,000 | After 30 years $680,300 |
Illustration only. I’ve assumed a constant 7% annual return before the fees shown, ignored tax, eventual selling costs and other possible costs, and rounded the results. Real investment returns will obviously not arrive in a neat 7% line.
Change the amount invested, the timing of additional contributions, the investment period, the assumed return, or any of the providers’ future fees, and those numbers change too.
So if someone tells me they have calculated that Fund A becomes cheaper than Fund B after precisely X years, my response is: perhaps, based on the assumptions used in that particular calculation.
Math matters. But for me, it is never the whole decision.
Something else caught my eye: look at the dates
Smart Total World ETF has been around since 2015.
InvestNow’s Foundation Series Total World Fund arrived in 2022.
Kernel launched its Total World Fund in mid-2026.
And now Sharesies has arrived in late 2026.
Kernel and Sharesies are therefore much newer funds.
That fact, by itself, doesn’t make a newer fund better or worse than an older one. I simply find the timeline interesting because each time something new appears with a slightly different structure or fee, I receive emails from people sharing their thoughts and pondering whether to make a change.
My friend Wayne put it well when he said:
“Once you buy a Mini, you see 100 Minis around town, Ruth!”
Investing can feel a bit like that. Once you’ve chosen an approach and started paying attention, suddenly you notice every new fund that comes along, and the natural response is to react.
But the launch of a new investment product, by itself, doesn’t establish whether an existing investment remains suitable or unsuitable for a particular person.
How Jonny and I approach investment reviews
Jonny and I have a very simple way of stopping ourselves from reacting every time a new investment product appears. I’ve found that everyone comes up with their own strategy.
When we first started investing, we did our research, made our decision, and then essentially said: right, we’re not changing anything until we reach $50,000 invested.
When we reached $50,000, we reviewed what we were doing. Had anything materially changed? Had we learnt something that altered the way we thought about our investments? Were they still doing what we wanted them to do?
We made changes where we felt they were appropriate for us and then set another milestone: $100,000.
And we kept going.
After many years of consistent additions to our investments and share market growth, our next investment review point will be a particularly satisfying one: $1,000,000 invested across our KiwiSaver and our ETF investment outside KiwiSaver. We still have about $160,000 to go, so for now we’re simply carrying on with our lives. I will let you know when we hit that milestone.
A new fund launch doesn’t automatically mean we have to change what we are doing. I can still be interested. I can read about it and write a blog post about it. But our own decisions happen at the review points we have deliberately created for ourselves.
Often, nothing changes.
This reminds me of JL Collins
Earlier this year I wrote about JL Collins changing an investment approach he had followed for decades. He added global exposure to his U.S. investments.
Jonny and I had made a similar change ourselves, moving from a US 500 ETF to a Total World ETF in 2025.
Neither of those changes happened simply because a new investment product appeared. For me, when we got to our review period, my thinking had changed.
I’d spent years reading, watching, discussing, and learning. Eventually, I decided that I no longer wanted our own investments concentrated so heavily in one country, the United States.
So we changed our own approach.
That is quite different from reacting immediately because another provider has launched something with a slightly different fee.
Fees matter. And so does behaviour.
Investment fees can have a substantial effect on your long-term investment balance.
You can see that in the example above, and I’ve added a few other scenarios below. There is a meaningful difference between an annual charge of 0.10% and one of 0.40% when large balances are involved over decades of investing. But if those fees go up to a much higher 1% or 2%, the investment balance after 30 years is substantially lower.
$100,000 lump sum
| $100,000 lump sum | After 10 years | After 20 years | After 30 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fund X – 1.00% | After 10 years $179,100 | After 20 years $320,700 | After 30 years $574,300 |
| Fund Y – 2.00% | After 10 years $162,900 | After 20 years $265,300 | After 30 years $432,200 |
For every $10,000 invested, the annual difference between 0.10% and 0.12% is just $2. Between 0.06% and 0.10%, it is $4, before taking into account other fees or costs.
But compare a fund charging 0.10% with one charging 1%, and that difference jumps to $90 a year. At 2%, you're paying $190 more each year on the same $10,000 investment.
And over the decades, the money lost to fees doesn’t get to stay invested, therefore doesn’t get to grow, and the impact of those higher fees on your investment growth can be enormous, which is why it's worth understanding the impact of fees on your investment returns.
But fees are still only one of the things an investor may want to understand when researching an investment.
What has changed since April?
When I wrote my earlier article in April, Sharesies did not have its own PIE fund offering this type of broad global share exposure.
Now it does.
The Sharesies Global Shares Fund currently has an annual fund charge of just 0.10%, no buy or sell fee, and no additional plan fee for accessing the fund.
It uses a different benchmark from the FTSE Global All Cap-based funds discussed above, but its stated benchmark is also designed to provide extremely broad exposure across developed and emerging share markets.
That is why I’ve included its published features in this updated comparison.
Its inclusion here isn’t a recommendation or an assessment that it is better or worse than any of the other three funds. It simply means there is another broadly diversified global share fund for New Zealand investors to research and understand, one that is worth comparing for those pursuing financial independence.
That is quite a change from the article I wrote six months ago, when Sharesies and Kernel did not offer their own fund of this type.
And that is one of the reasons I keep writing these updates: things change.
Does that mean you should switch or stay?
I can’t answer that question for you.
Deciding whether a particular fund is appropriate for somebody depends on their own circumstances, objectives and preferences. I’m not a financial adviser, and I have a grand total of zero financial qualifications.
What I can do is provide factual information that may help with your own research.
Things you may want to understand include what a fund invests in, the index or strategy it follows, its fees and transaction costs, its tax structure, how investments are held, how you buy/sell, and the features and functionality of the website and user experience offered by the provider. We in the personal finance community love digging into this information, comparing different options, and sharing what we have learned in an effort to help others with their own decision-making!
For me, the useful thing is continuing to learn, understanding what has changed, and periodically reviewing the decisions Jonny and I have made for ourselves.
And that’s really no different from what I was trying to say back in April:
Research. Understand. Keep it simple. Review. Refine. Keep going!
There are now more options to research, and I think having more information and low-fee options available to New Zealand investors is a good thing.
To the people who reached out to me with your questions, I hope this update helps with your own research.
