News

As merger activity continues apace, State Street – armed with its “unique” front-to-back solution – intends to take a dominant position as custodian of choice for the biggest end of town. The super industry and its custodians are now exiting a period of relative stability. The number of funds has more than halved in the…

Schroders has launched likely the first dedicated fund managed directly to the Your Future, Your Super (YFYS) benchmark for alternative investments. The Global Active Allocation Fund, which has secured a foundation investment mandate from a large super fund, is a multi-asset portfolio with the objective of outperforming the YFYS benchmark applying to alternative investments and…

Rumoured talks between NAB Asset Servicing (NAS) and HSBC have re-opened the possibility that Australia’s last homegrown custody business will finally close its doors. The latest rumour circulating through Australia’s tight-knit asset servicing industry is that HSBC is pitching to negotiate the potential transfer of NAS’ 30 largest clients to its business, while NAS would…

Before Jack Diamond, a super industry and funds management stalwart, was diagnosed with cancer his friend Josh Funder had come up with the idea of sponsoring an award for innovation in finance. It is called the ‘Diamond Award’. For Funder, the founder and chief executive of Household Capital, an innovative firm itself which lends to…

HSBC has recruited a State Street custody veteran as part of a long-planned expansion of its own business. Sinclair Scholfield has been appointed head of sales and client management for HSBC’s Securities Services business in Australia and New Zealand. Scholfield spent the last 18 years at State Street, where he was most recently head of…

A mere 13 funds were dispatched by the first round of the Your Future Your Super (YFYS) performance test. Chant West believes the damage could be worse in the choice sector. Later this year, APRA’s performance test will be brought to bear against the choice sector after a dry run on the smaller universe of…

AustralianSuper will build its financial penalty war chest from its administration reserve instead of new member fees, but has left the door open to future admin fee hikes. AustralianSuper has changed its Trust Deed to include a right for its trustee to be paid a limited “Trustee Risk Reserve Fee” (TRRF) in light of the…

Carbon analytics fintech Emmi has appointed a chief operations officer as it onboards a slew of new super fund and consulting clients. Rebecca Bannan, who was previously Emmi’s head of strategy and operations, will step into the role of chief operations officer. Bannan, a chartered financial analyst, was previously investment director for strategic advisory at…

Mercer has proposed a slew of tax changes to address the super system’s “inherent bias towards high income earners” and reduce the gender pension gap. Under Mercer’s proposed changes, individuals with balances over $5 million would be required to reduce their balance to that amount and those over the age of 75 would be required…

Helen Hewett, one of the superannuation industry’s finest leaders, the mental health sector’s finest battlers and the women’s movement’s finest warriors has died. When she became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2019, her first thought, she said at the time, was to how proud her parents would have been. The last…

Active managers are more sensitive than ever to valuation risk. But in recent times it’s been a case of “go big or go home.” In recent years, Frontier has noted a narrowing in the breadth of US equity market return drivers, and short-term extremes of the same, with just a handful of tech mega-cap stocks…

Australia’s superannuation system is leading the world in pensions, but the broader market is still missing opportunities on stewardship and technology. The Thinking Ahead Institute’s 2022 Global Pension Assets Study has named Australia the world’s number one pension market, with 20-year pension asset growth of 11.3 per cent per annum in US dollar terms. The…