Print Super, as the continuing fund in the merger with JUST Super, has called in Rice Warner Actuaries to run a full tender for its asset consulting contract, currently with Mercer Investment Consulting, while a tender for master custody will occur in the second half of 2008.
This asset consulting tender will be the only one undertaken in advance of the winding-up of JUST and the newly merged fund commencing operation on June 30 – almost exactly a year after the original heads of agreement between Print Super and JUST was signed. As operational details of the new fund continue to be bedded down, it has been confirmed that although current JUST chair Gerard Noonan will chair the new merged fund, directors with a Print Super heritage will outnumber those from the JUST side by seven to five. The JUST chief executive, Mi Thian-De Wind, said that tenders would be initiated for other major service providers as their contracts became due after the merger, but initially Print’s member administrator, Pillar, and master custodian BNP Paribas Securities Services would service the new $3 billion, 110,000 member fund. The funds’ respective insurers – Allianz and Hannover Life for Print Super, ING Life for JUST Super, will both transfer arrangements to the new fund but will face a subsequent tender process to find a single insurer, Thian-De Wind said.
There is one investment area where Insignia’s $180 billion super arm has not lost money for the past 17 years, which is what it calls the insurance-related investments. The alternatives strategy is gaining popularity among asset owners due to its diversification benefit, but Insignia’s super and asset management investment chief Dan Farmer warns it is a space where investors can suffer if they “stumble in without doing the homework”.
Darcy SongJanuary 23, 2025
