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ADR-041: Akahu as NZ external asset aggregation layer; direct APIs for AU super
Status Accepted
Date 2026-04-15
Deciders CTO, Head of Architecture, Head of Data, Head of Product
Affects repos bank-platform, bank-app

Status: Accepted — 2026-04-15

Context

Displaying a customer's complete financial position requires access to assets held outside the bank — primarily KiwiSaver (NZ retirement savings) and Australian superannuation. These assets are often the largest long-term financial holding a customer has outside residential property.

Several access patterns exist:

  • Screen scraping — undesirable; fragile, legally ambiguous under the Privacy Act 2020 and the proposed Consumer Data Right framework, and rejected by most providers.
  • Direct provider APIs — only available from a subset of providers; no common NZ standard for investment products.
  • Account aggregation platform (Akahu) — Akahu is a NZ-based financial data aggregation API that provides structured, OAuth 2.0-based access to major NZ banks and a growing number of KiwiSaver providers. No screen scraping; consent-based; provider-agnostic abstraction for consumers.
  • Australian CDR — CDR does not yet cover superannuation in AU (as at 2026). Direct provider REST APIs or SMSF feed files are the available options.

NZ Open Banking standards (Payments NZ API Centre) cover transaction accounts but not investment products; this gap is not expected to close before 2028 at the earliest.

Decision

Use Akahu as the primary NZ external asset aggregation layer. Akahu provides API-based access to KiwiSaver providers and held-away bank accounts under OAuth 2.0 customer consent, abstracting provider differences behind a normalised response schema.

For Australian superannuation, integrate via direct provider REST APIs where available (major fund managers publish member APIs for accredited third parties). Where no API is available, accept provider-hosted SFTP or secure feed delivery as a degraded fallback. AU super integration is deferred to Phase 2.

A normalisation layer (MOD-100 external asset connector) maps provider-specific response shapes to the canonical assets + asset_party_relationships tables in SD01 Postgres. New providers require only a mapping update — no changes to consumers.

Consequences

Positive: - Akahu is already in production at multiple NZ fintechs; no greenfield integration risk - Consent-based model satisfies privacy and data use obligations under Privacy Act 2020 - Provider abstraction means Akahu can switch underlying bank connections without affecting consumers - KiwiSaver balance data (balance, fund type, provider, last contribution date) is available for all major providers connected to Akahu - Akahu also enables held-away bank account visibility (useful for bank migration UX and fuller financial picture)

Negative / risks: - Akahu is a third-party dependency; outage or commercial change affects external asset visibility (mitigated: non-critical path — bank accounts function without it) - Not all KiwiSaver providers are Akahu-connected; coverage is improving but not 100% (degraded gracefully — show what's available, indicate what isn't) - AU super coverage via direct APIs is uneven — some large funds (AustralianSuper, REST, Aware) have member APIs; many smaller funds do not - KiwiSaver data is unit-priced daily (business days) — not real-time; UX must communicate staleness clearly

Provider coverage note (NZ KiwiSaver, as at 2026)

Major providers via Akahu: ANZ Investments, ASB KiwiSaver, Fisher Funds (including former Kiwi Wealth scheme), Simplicity, Generate, Milford Asset Management, Booster, BNZ KiwiSaver, Westpac KiwiSaver. Coverage is expanding.

Note: Kiwi Wealth was acquired by Fisher Funds in 2022 and operates as Fisher Funds Scheme.

FMA financial advice boundary

Displaying KiwiSaver balance, fund type, and contribution health indicators is not financial advice under the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 (as amended by the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Act 2019). Personalised recommendations to switch fund type or provider would require a Financial Advice Provider (FAP) licence. The wealth intelligence module (MOD-101) produces insights and indicators only — no product-specific recommendations.

All ADRs Compiled 2026-05-22 from source/entities/adrs/ADR-041.yaml