The near $100 billion construction industry fund has blundered into an ugly governance and administration debacle, and it’s unlikely that ASIC will let it off easy. Nor should it, with funds increasingly failing to provide their members with key services.
Your Future, Your Super makes it harder for funds to push deeper into some sustainable investment strategies, but has “counter-intuitively” resulted in funds looking to take a more complex approach to stewardship.
The RBA says that super funds’ long investment horizons are a positive for the stability of the financial system but that widening access to the savings they contain would require more careful liquidity management.
Finance minister Katy Gallagher has confirmed that she held informal talks with the sovereign wealth fund’s Board of Guardians amidst speculation its mandate could be changed to align it with the transition to net zero.
Australia’s superannuation funds have nearly the highest proportion of internal asset management in the world, but there’s plenty of questions hanging over the practice even as funds push into more expensive niche asset classes.
The retirement chief of the $335 billion AustralianSuper, who was “instrumental” in delivering a slew of member experience uplifts across a 17-year stint with the fund, will leave this month to establish a new venture.
It’s “quite realistic” that many super funds will take too long to build the basics of a retirement income strategy, and the system might need a licencing regime to make sure members are getting the best service.
Super funds have been able to earn “enormously good returns” from strong economic tailwinds and a calm geopolitical backdrop, but that period of stability is now at an end, and they’ll have to adapt to a more uncertain world.
The boondoggle about superannuation marketing spend is mostly theatre, and does nothing to answer the question of what is really in members’ best financial interests.
Value stocks are hit harder in market drawdowns but come out of them faster and harder, according to research from Pzena Investment Management.
