Super

Megafunds might be thought of as lumbering beasts of the ASX, but taking advantage of market dislocations means moving pretty quickly. “Size, scale and power” in manager relationships helps.

KPMG’s latest Super Insights report shows the future shape that the industry might take, with distinct cohorts of funds now emerging across size and service. But there’s little positive sentiment to be found about funds online.

While Australian Retirement Trust thinks massive scale makes offshore investing a must, not every fund wants to join the jet set, and UniSuper thinks there’s still plenty of opportunities to be had at home.

Active Super and Vision Super are now entering the home stretch of a drawn-out merger process that will create a new $29 billion fund with 170,000 member accounts.

The Coalition’s plan to let Australians access their superannuation for a house deposit would create a “budget blackhole”, according to modelling commissioned by the Super Members Council.

The $26 billion TelstraSuper has become the latest corporate super fund to weigh its merger options in the face of increasing competition and scale issues in the rapidly consolidating industry.

The $13 billion Mine Super is headed for a merger with TWUSUPER that will diversify both funds’ member bases into new sectors, plug gaps in their portfolios and prepare it for a world where bigger is (allegedly) better.

To deliver for its highly engaged member base, UniSuper must walk a fine line between investing responsibly for their future and meeting their demands around climate change in the here and now.

A new report “from the coalface” of super fund investing has gone some way to quantifying the cost of shonky investment management, with members potentially losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A number of super funds managing less than $10 billion have been slugged with an increase in their restricted APRA levy of more than 80 per cent even as the regulator pushes them to keep costs down.

Australia’s biggest super funds disagree on what the new Your Future, Your Super performance test should look like, but they both think the consequences for failure should be just as weighty – and apply to everybody equally.

The $280 billion ART has become the latest megafund to set up an offshore outpost as it looks to secure “even more compelling investment opportunities” for its 2.3 million members.