This year’s top 10 stories included a peek into AustralianSuper’s international equities build out in London, AMP’s move to slash employee benefits, and plenty of hard-hitting analysis of the issues that matter in institutional investment. But the real story is how readers helped shape all of that coverage.
Orbis’ Stuart Place is riding from Melbourne to the Moon and Back to fund a treatment for the “monster of a disease” that his youngest son was born with. The investment industry is rallying behind him.
Compare the pair: the gap widens despite MySuper
Never failing to let a chance go by, Industry Super Australia has analysed the latest super fund returns figures, put them in a 10-year context and, once again, compared the pair – industry funds versus bank-owned funds. The gap, the numbers say, is widening.
The latest SuperRatings monthly data show, on average, industry super funds have outperformed bank-owned super funds by more than 2 per cent a year over 10 years.
David Whiteley, Industry Super Australia chief executive, said: “The growing gap between industry fund and bank-owned fund performance should be ringing alarm bells for members of bank-owned superfunds and the Government.
“The banks and their superfunds are failing to meet their social license obligations as managers of workers’ compulsory retirement savings. Industry super funds’ continued outperformance comes down to asset allocation and the questionable profit orientation of bank-owned super funds which is eroding their members’ nest eggs.
“The decade-long failure of the banks to match industry super funds returns could mean millions of Australians retiring with less or working longer. The data brings into question the legitimacy of bank-owned super funds as a part of the compulsory super system given their chronic underperformance,” he said.
Whitely said industry super funds have also dominated SuperRatings top 10 rankings for balanced options for the year to June 2017, delivering superior returns to their members.
An interesting aspect of the latest analysis, for the past year, is that the headline costs of the bank-owned super funds have been reduced in their MySuper offerings by more than the industry funds’ costs have. This is because the bank-owned funds have much higher allocation to passive strategies, including smart beta.
The uptick in relative performance by industry funds may well come down to their investment strategies focusing not only on unlisted premia such as is available through infrastructure, but also their higher use of active management, including internally run funds.
