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Videos filled with hacks and tips on how to falsely take claims out of your retirement fund are cropping up across social media — sparking concerns around whether hardship claims are being used for legitimate reasons.
A record number of hardship withdrawals have been taken out from KiwiSaver in the past year.
A fund manager told RNZ there were a multitude of social media videos full of workarounds to help people qualify for hardship withdrawals and effectively game the system.
Inland revenue figures showed between July 2024 and April 2025, more than $389 million was taken out of KiwiSaver for financial hardship reasons. That was up from $300 million on the year before.
People could access KiwiSaver retirement funds in significant financial hardship, including to pay for food, power or palliative care.
In social media videos, people spoke about using their KiwiSaver to make withdrawals for a car, gastric surgery and even a move to Australia.
The "how to guide" videos were littered across social media platforms. In one six-minute TikTok guide, the user explained how to falsely prove you were in hardship.
"You need to apply through a loan company and get a decline letter... once you have that decline letter it lets the application know you looked for funds elsewhere."
Another user urged people to ignore the guidelines laid out in the application, encouraging people to create extra expenses to put their finances in the red.
"If you come up positive, that's all good, but you need to go and find another quote.
"You need to find another expense... get that number into a negative so you have more of an opportunity to get the amount that you want."
General manager for KiwiSaver Fisher Funds, David Boyle, told RNZ the videos were concerning.
"Some of that information that I've seen and and heard just then on TikTok is disturbing."
Boyle said those who are trying to "game" the system should think about what they were doing.
"It's actually going to be impacting those that really, really need it," Boyle said.
"They could be putting a lot more of our transactions into the system that aren't necessarily going to be approved anyway."
He said an increase in applications could slow down the process for those in need.
"Influencers on TikTok are giving really poor advice and actually advice that is not appropriate, that they could be clogging the system."
He said the hardship fund was designed for people who really needed it, and should be used in situations where they could not mitigate essential costs.
"They're going to be in a situation where they can't maintain their home or their debt.... that is going to put them into a far worse situation."
Boyle said it was important to remember that these claims were coming out of people's retirement fund, and taking away from their future investment.
Like Inland Revenue, Fisher Funds had also seen an increase in hardship withdrawals.
Boyle said it was unclear how much impact the videos were having on the increase.
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"It's probably fair to say that they are having an impact, but just what size of that impact? It would be very hard to tell."
rnz.co.nz
