News

APRA has issued Vanguard a superannuation licence as it prepares to launch a disruptive play for Australia’s gargantuan retirement savings pool.

ASFA wants the YFYS performance test benchmarks tweaked to account for the exclusions and negative screens that faith- and values-based funds use.

Hostplus CIO Sam Sicilia believes the trillions of dollars washing around super could be put to good use in nation-building projects – and that criticisms of investing in unlisted assets are an “absurdity”.

NGS Super has made two new hires for its investment team, strengthening its capabilities in international and Australian equities as it works to make its portfolio carbon neutral by 2030.

Overseas, Australia’s biggest super fund is a small fish in a massive pond. To achieve the scale it wants it will have to dive deeper into the private markets, meeting stiff competition from its North American peers along the way.

Shame-based investment strategies yoked to simplistic environmental, social and governance (ESG) scoring systems have come under fire in a new report from UK data analytics firm, Util.

If negative screening worked, stocks in the sin bin should have lower firm valuations, higher future stock returns, and delist more often. They don’t.

“If you don’t know where you are in a bear market, then you should be in the game… We get asked: ‘is it too late?’ Our view is that it’s never too late to think about defensive strategies.”

“The industry should not be happy to simply sit somewhere in the middle… Increased transparency will drive increased analysis and action. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

It turns out that being a top performer can be tough as institutional clients pull money from favourites amidst broader equity de-risking.

“If you have style drift and you move into the latest hot thing, you’re gonna get whipsawed… That’s usually the death knell of a fund manager, that style drift.”

The spectre of early release still looms large over the industry, and super’s true believers want its purpose legislated to prevent Australia’s retirement savings from becoming a crisis piggy bank.