The $74 billion industry fund is now managing roughly 10 per cent of its assets in-house, with plans to get more bang for its buck in its sustainable strategies too. But it won’t be abandoning its hybrid model anytime soon.
Having “skin in the game” is usually a boon for performance and client alignment. But when managers put their money where their mouth is, they don’t invest it sustainably according to a Swiss report.
The head of NAB’s custody business will step down while its cornerstone client looks for a new service provider.
If greed is good in the world of private equity, it’s anathema to super funds and other pension plans with members that will never make as much money as the people who manage their retirement savings.
The industry super collective logo has become one of the industry’s most recognisable symbols and a full-blown memetic in its own right. Its genesis was in a campaign to get retail funds to take their “beaks out of the carcass”.
Mergers aren’t costless and big super can’t necessarily be counted on to clean up the long tail of unsustainable small funds. Solving the problem might require thinking outside the box.
The world of ethical investing continues to change, and Australian Ethical is investing in itself to keep up. A new CIO and a portfolio of impact investments from the Christian Super successor fund transfer are helping too.
Some of the country’s biggest super funds have navigated volatile markets and write-downs in one of their favourite asset classes to deliver solid returns in a tough year.
Australian super funds and asset managers shouldn’t ape their international peers when it comes to unlisted investment practice, according to Frontier, and demand for more frequent valuations will ultimately be worn by members.
There’s going to be plenty of low cost of capital opportunities for super funds as Australia’s existing power infrastructure is retired and replaced with renewable energy generation – not to mention its storage.
