Opening up early access to super for housing would have a negative effect on the balances of even those members that don’t dig into their savings, with funds forced to adopt more conservative investment strategies and hold more liquid assets.
The circa $88 billion industry fund for workers in health and community services reckons that alleviating the affordable housing crisis will boost its other investments by easing the cost of living and inflation.
La Trobe ups the ante for CIO and COO awards
Applications for the annual CIO and COO awards for fiduciary investors in Australia, such as super funds and multi-managers, are now open, it was announced last week by La Trobe Financial.
The awards recognise the achievements of key executives managing retirement savings and aim to encourage them to further their education in the pursuit of world’s best practice in fund management.
Next year’s awards, which will be announced in May at a gala function in Melbourne, carry a prize of $A10,000 for each of the chief investment officer and chief operating officer judged to be the best for the year. The prize for each category in 2012 was $5,000. The winners for 2012 were Steve Merlicek, the CIO of multi-manager IOOF, and Stephen Rowbottom, the COO of super fund Host-Plus.
La Trobe Financial is the main sponsor and organiser of the Awards. Other sponsors – so far signed – for next year’s event are: National Australia Bank, JP Morgan, Affiliated Managers’ Group, Commonwealth Bank, Northern Trust, PwC, Ernst & Young and KPMG. A new category of ‘supporters’ has been added to make sponsorship accessible to more service providers in the industry. The 2012 awards attracted about 150 attendees, which is expected to be exceeded next year.
Greg O’Neill, the president and CEO of La Trobe, said last week that the job of judging the nominations was difficult because of the high calibre of candidates.
“We could tell from our process that for most Australians their retirement savings are in good hands,” he said. “I hope these awards provide further incentive for all executives in the industry to continue to pursue world’s best practice in their endeavours.”
The judging panel consists of: Greg Bright* as chair; Jeff Bresnahan, the managing director of SuperRatings; Chris Page, the chief executive of Rainmaker Information; David Coogan, a partner of PwC; Christina Liosis, former CFO of Telstra Super; and Mr O’Neill of La Trobe.
*Greg Bright is the editor of this newsletter and also a director of La Trobe Financial.
