Where's it gone? More than six months delay in KiwiSaver money going from IRD to provider

A KiwiSaver member was worried her money had disappeared into an abyss after an Inland Revenue glitch. Photo / File

A woman has been left waiting more than six months for her KiwiSaver employer contribution to pass through to her provider after a glitch in Inland Revenue's systems.

Andrea, who doesn't want her last name used, said she noticed her March employer contribution - which should have been just under $300 - did not appear in her myIR KiwiSaver account in April.

"It always shows the two amounts each month - the employer and the other one. And I just noticed there was only one line for the March one.

"I just thought I will give it a little bit and it will appear and it never did."

Then the April KiwiSaver employer contribution came through but still not the March one prompting her to send a message to Inland Revenue using their internal messaging system.

They responded with a message to say: "this is a system error at our end due to conversion of accounts from our old computer system to our new computer system.

"I can see that your employer has declared the employer contribution and it has been allocated to your account but due to the issue it has not yet passed to the scheme provider."

IRD switched all KiwiSaver information onto a new system in April.

The customer services officer apologised for the delay and said the issue was being worked on.

But two months later when Andrea queried the issue again in July it had still not been fixed.

This time the Inland Revenue representative responded by saying they were still working on the issue but could not provide a timeframe for its resolution.

Andrea received another apology and was told she would be notified when the issue was fixed.

But six months later the money was still not with her KiwiSaver provider Fisher Funds when she spoke to the Herald on Friday morning.

"It seems like they should have found it by now."

She said all her other KiwiSaver contributions had come through. "It is just that one entry."

"A couple of hundred dollars isn't a big deal but it is just the principle of where has it gone?"

The Herald sent a query to Inland Revenue about Andrea's situation and within hours it had been sorted.

An Inland Revenue spokeswoman said the issue had been resolved but for privacy reasons did not give any details about the resolution.

"She should notice the effect of that on her KiwiSaver account early next week."

Andrea was also worried it may be a widespread issue given Inland Revenue switched all KiwiSaver accounts to a new system in April.

"If it is happening to everyone who is an employee ... that ends up being quite a lot of money combined."

The IRD spokeswoman said it could not answer the question of how many others might be affected without the query going through an Official Information Act request due to the amount of time and resource it would take to find that out.

KiwiSaver members can check their contributions to KiwiSaver by signing up for the myIR service.

It can take up to three months for the money to be transferred from IRD to the KiwiSaver provider.