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 NZ Superannuation Fund has made half-a-dozen fresh investments over the previous few months across an eclectic range of strategies including US timber, a quant trend-follower and a life science specialist.
Mark the diary for ‘My Platform Rules’
The member-directed platforms being introduced by big super funds are likely to change the landscape of the institutional investment market in Australia, and very quickly.
According to Patrick Liddy, principal of the consulting firm MSI Group, these platforms will have a massive impact on all the service providers to super funds, such as custodians, brokers, administrators and fund managers, as well as the funds themselves.
He is to convene a conference in Sydney on the topic, “My Platform Rules”, to take place on November 19, 2013, at the Four Seasons Hotel. The conference will be produced in conjunction with IO&C (publisher of this newsletter).
Liddy says: “Every major market segment, every major distribution, every major fund manager and every major superannuation fund has a platform. And they are all evolving in different ways at different rates and some are very old.
1.How the big four can loose – The big four banks are being challenged and overtaken by not-for-profit – Australian Super, Host Plus – Telstra Super compared to the’ four pillars’.Â
2.How will the middle players survive – The likes of IOOF, Australian Unity, Bank of Queensland and the Bendigo Bank. How do they fit and do their likes have a future?
3.Self managed superannuation – the biggest threat / opportunity to them all. A ‘cottage industry ripe for industrialisation’.
4.The UK and how they have ‘leaped ahead’ of Australia in thinking and practice.
5.How fund managers are part of the problem and the solution. How will they react here compared to overseas?
6.Master custodians, their pivotal position, but only the smart ones please.
7.Technology the enabler, but ‘old habits die hard’. And let’s face it some organisations have been pretty dumb with technology.
“This will be the most provoking conference you will attend this year, it will also be the most relevant. I expect the attendance to include: CEOs, marketing managers, and CIOs of large funds, fund managers, master custodians, systems providers and platform enablers, brokers and others who need to position themselves for the changes which are happening in the institutional space.”
