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.
More and more regulatory pressure on pension funds
Pension funds, and other fiduciary investors, need to provide greater transparency as the world moves towards increased scrutiny of its savings systems, according to former academic and current managing director of JP Morgan, Benjie Fraser.
Fraser, a London-based strategist at JP Morgan, told the IO&C conference that there was increased scrutiny on the pension fund sector of the economy as it grew in size, particularly in countries such as Australia.
He said there was increased focus from the regulators following the global financial crisis (GFC) – not that the audience needed reminding of that.
But, drilling down, he said, there would be higher expectations and demands on fund governance in the future. There would also be increased reporting and transparency requirements.
Other trends included increased member choice, ‘true-to-label” products, and increased importance on the provision of data.
Fraser asked the following questions:
. Will members continue to take all the risk?
. Will too much control by the regulators and short-termism by non-financially savvy investors stifle or prevent funds from generating alpha?
. Complexity does not equal risk, but how can we ensure that investors understand that? Do they need to?
