Foundation Series US Dividend Equity Fund vs Kernel World ex-US Fund

The most material structural difference between these two funds is their geographic mandate and portfolio construction approach. The Foundation Series US Dividend Equity Fund holds 99.75% of its assets in a single instrument — the Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF — giving investors concentrated exposure to US dividend-paying equities through one underlying ETF wrapper. The Kernel World ex-US Fund, by contrast, holds a diversified basket of individual securities across non-US developed markets, with its five largest positions — ASML Holdings, AstraZeneca, Novartis, HSBC, and Roche — each individually weighted below 2.3%, suggesting broad multi-country spread that explicitly excludes the United States.

Fee structures differ meaningfully: Foundation Series discloses an annual fund charge of 0.06%, while Kernel discloses 0.25% — a difference of 0.19 percentage points that compounds over time. Both funds carry a risk indicator of 5 and allocate approximately 98% to growth assets, so their volatility profiles and asset-class positioning are broadly similar on those measures.

Fund size is comparable — Foundation Series at NZD 10.81 million versus Kernel at NZD 9.25 million — though both remain relatively small funds. Neither fund discloses a five-year return figure in this snapshot, so historical performance cannot be compared here.

Investors seeking dividend-oriented US equity exposure through a single low-cost ETF structure will find a different proposition from those seeking diversified non-US international equity exposure across individual holdings. Always verify all figures against each fund's current Product Disclosure Statement and latest Quarterly Fund Update on FMA Disclose before relying on any of this information.