Challenger

While there’s a perception that defined benefit funds have mostly vanished from the earth, they still manage a hefty chunk of Australia’s pension savings and DC funds can learn a lot from them in their efforts to solve the retirement problem for their members

The $127 billion Challenger has selected State Street as its new custodian and will be one of the largest invest managers in the region to deploy Alpha, its front-to-back asset servicing platform.

The appointment of industry veteran Cathy Hales, who started in the newly created role on Monday, will support Mercer’s growth strategy across investments and retirement in the Pacific region, the company said. Her remit will include the $63 billion Mercer Super Trust.

As funds exit regulatory deadlock and a generation of superannuants enter the retirement phase, super will need a new wave of thinkers to argue some of its toughest debates.

While the publishing of retirement income strategies is a big step forward into super’s new frontier, many of those strategies are based on a “very unsafe foundation.”

With the advent of the Retirement Income Covenant (RIC), super funds can finally move forward on the decumulation phase. But they shouldn’t try to “boil the sea.”

Private markets assets are “ripe for the picking” for fund managers and administrators quick to use distributed ledger technology, as investment operations are on the cusp of “great change”. So said David Mackaway, the COO of Challenger Group, at the Calastone ‘Connect Forum’ last week (December 2. He was interviewed by Justin Christopher, Calastone director…

Strong super returns are about to encounter significant headwinds. And with the government prowling for more money, funds might once again foot the bill. It’s no secret that market conditions have been enormously supportive over the last decade – and that super has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of those conditions, particularly through 2020,…

Going it alone is never easy. But it seems that for Dr Joseph Lai, the hardest part of starting his own boutique was picking a name. One candidate was ‘Iora’ – a colourful songbird found across many of the emerging markets that Lai has spent his career investing in. But Lai and his colleagues ultimately…

Strong day for the ASX, private equity buys into Challenger, NSW lockdowns continue  Every sector barring energy and industrials finished higher on Wednesday, with the ASX 200 jumping 0.9%. Buy now pay later groups were among the top performers, with Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) and Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) adding 6.5% and 4.5%, respectively. Challenger Financial Group (ASX: CGF) was the…