Aware Super

“Talent incubator” Future IM/Pact has partnered with four of Australia’s biggest super funds to help women into frontline investment roles. Investment internalisation is driving some of the interest.

A landmark report from J.P. Morgan paints a picture of an industry racing towards a future that it doesn’t yet understand. Our big super funds look like strangers in a strange land. “What would be helpful from a regulatory perspective, or even a government perspective, is what are we actually driving towards?” says Mine Super…

Plenty of big super funds have announced their intention to dump their Russian assets, and the government wants them to. But saying do svidanya is harder than they thought. From a certain angle, there’s a lot of Russia in the super system. Once ruled by unapologetic socialists, they’ve both become capitalistic in the aftermath of…

The problems with Your Future Your Super (YFYS) run deep – among them, how super funds will manage ESG within the confines of low tracking error strategies. But it’s not the end of the road. Under the YFYS reforms, implementation manager Parametric believes tracking error will face downwards pressure as funds try to stay on…

It’s probably too early to pick the winners in the transition to net-zero. But the lack of a solid plan at the Federal level is making things even more complicated. The interest in renewable energy has grown substantially over the past 18 months, and particularly in the leadup to COP26, where world leaders aim to…

There’s perhaps only one thing more satisfying for the business people who run big funds management firms than organic growth, and that’s to reward the trust of long-term clients. Around the 10th anniversary of the Martin Currie Global Emerging Markets team, three of the crucial players behind the success of the strategy have reflected on…

Super funds may soon be forced to reveal internal valuations for unlisted assets. But the lesson from the Future Fund is that the new regulations aren’t in anybody’s best interests. While much of government’s recent focus has been on implementing the “Your Future Your Super” performance test, super funds could also soon be subject to…

Last year a big super fund, Aware Super, shocked the M&A market in Australia with a surprise bid for a listed company, OptiComm. It signalled a new era in competition among players at the big end of town. It was the first time a super fund had tried to buy a whole listed company in…

There is a growing fear that the post-YFYS landscape will be dominated by a handful of megafunds, with competition – and differentiated member outcomes – disappearing. Super funds are about to experience a quick and bloody cull. With the first underperformance results expected on September 1, and letters to be sent out soon after advising…

Last week was a big one for the chief executives of AustralianSuper and Cbus. Their funds announced record-setting returns for the financial year and the next day they both took another hammering from a Commonwealth parliamentary committee. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, chaired by Tim Wilson, a Liberal MP, is often enlivened…