Martin Fahy

Martin Fahy has stepped down as CEO of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) after seven years at the helm where he played a “pivotal role” in addressing the policy and regulatory changes of the period.

ASFA wants the YFYS performance test benchmarks tweaked to account for the exclusions and negative screens that faith- and values-based funds use.

While Liberals and Labor have sparred for decades, it seems that many Australians believe the ideological conflict waged over superannuation is mostly moot. The super wars have raged unchecked since the introduction of the superannuation guarantee (SG) in the heady days of 1993. But the ideological battles in Parliament and the press have been waged…

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…

They might be behemoths at home, but Australia’s biggest super funds will be on the backfoot as they scour the globe for investment opportunities. NAB’s biennial FX Hedging survey is not only a good insight into super fund hedging strategies, but the state of the industry itself – particularly its growing interest in markets beyond…

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg believes the Future Fund should be made Australia’s default superannuation fund. But national superannuation is a political minefield. In conversation with Simon Cowan, research director at the Centre for Independent Studies, Bragg called compulsory superannuation a “fundamentally illiberal, paternalistic policy” and said that the Australian government should “take its responsibilities more…

The Standing Committee on Economics is launching a new inquiry into big super. Not everybody is happy about it. Compulsory viewing for many professionals and reporters, the Standing Committee on Economics is infamous for its hardball interrogations of Australia’s biggest institutional investors, and the announcement of a new inquiry will likely have some stakeholders tearing…