KPMG

KPMG’s latest Super Insights report shows the future shape that the industry might take, with distinct cohorts of funds now emerging across size and service. But there’s little positive sentiment to be found about funds online.

The asset consultant has rounded out its real assets and private markets research with two new appointments as both areas grow in importance to the institutional investors it services.

Competition in super is heating up but it’s not yet come to the boil. Mergers, member retention and retirement are all shaping up as key battlegrounds for funds.

There’s no end in sight for super fund consolidation, and even top performing funds are merging in an effort to keep up. But what gets lost in the debate is what members think of it all.

Overseas, Australia’s biggest super fund is a small fish in a massive pond. To achieve the scale it wants it will have to dive deeper into the private markets, meeting stiff competition from its North American peers along the way.

In less than 20 years there will likely be a trillion-dollar super fund. So how will it throw its awesome weight around? It might have been premature to label AustralianSuper our first mega-fund. After all, it gives little room to move when coming up with a descriptor for a fund that will someday manage $1…

Ian Silk, AustralianSuper’s powerhouse former chief executive officer, will join KPMG part-time as the firm broadens its focus on ESG solutions. Ian Silk will join KPMG as a special advisor, working on ESG issues as part of the firm’s “reinvigorated plans to help clients embrace the greater focus on ESG responsibilities” as well as on…

The trend towards super consolidation is continuing apace, but there will be fewer mega mergers. It’s now just a matter of mopping up. Mega fund mergers are likely to slow as boards realise the “significant transition planning and integration activity” required to pull them off – but the established mega funds will continue to gobble…

It’s approaching orthodoxy that a merger is always in the best interests of members. But is bigger always better? What is the true price of scale? Leeanne Turner, Spirit Super’s inaugural chief executive, told a CMSF audience in May: “If you’re not considering a merger then you either have your head in the sand or…

KPMG believes $50 billion is about the minimum size for an APRA-regulated fund when the dust settles. Helen Rowell, the retiring deputy chair of APRA, believes it should be $30 billion. The figures were bandied about at the CMSF conference where mergers were discussed in some detail. Leeanne Turner, who has just been through one…