APRA

Mercer Super Trust’s merger with Westpac’s superannuation assets will prepare the retail fund for a new era of competition in Australia’s rapidly consolidating super sector.

Life isn’t always easy at the small end of town, but the $5 billion legalsuper is kicking against APRA’s orthodoxy that bigger is nearly always better.

Australia’s super funds are racing to achieve massive size in the understanding that it will create untold benefits for members. But “a little but of circumspection and caution” is required. “People seem to be taking it as a fact that you just need to be bigger, and that it’s obvious you need to be bigger…

APRA’s orthodoxy on scale and its importance to funds has been disputed by all comers, with “massive and passive” a common refrain. But the regulator is hoping to prove that bigger really is better. One of the more controversial moments of Helen Rowell’s career as APRA’s superannuation executive was the claim that any fund below…

The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) has argued that funds should be permitted to use their operational risk financial reserve (ORFR) to upgrade their systems and prevent future risks earlier. The “blunt” 0.25 per cent of fund capital that funds must hold in their ORFR is now becoming a “very significant sum” for some…

As funds get bigger and bigger – and the Your Future Your Super (YFYS) performance test bites – they’re rethinking everything from alpha generation to their intrinsic investment philosophies. While the increasing size of super funds will benefit them in unlisted markets – where big funds can increasingly play on the same field as global…

To fix the Your Future, Your Super (YFYS) performance test, Treasury and regulators need to reconsider their fixation on a “bright line” measure. It’s a testament to the flaws of the YFYS performance test that, several months after it was first applied to MySuper products, the super sector’s intelligentsia are still trying to fix it….

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…

In the aftermath of Your Future Your Super (YFYS), members of dud funds still aren’t moving their super. And it’s not clear what the government and regulators can do about it. It sometimes seems that so much time was spent on implementing the contentious YFYS reforms that the question of what would happen to members…

While profit-to-member funds have been given the go-ahead to build reserves from new fees on members, Equity Trustees believes that fund shareholders should pony up instead. The issue of so-called “$12 trustees” has leapt to prominence in recent months as super funds flocked to courts to get the green light to build capital reserves through…