Michael Wyrsch

Vision Super chief investment officer and deputy CEO Michael Wyrsch will head up the investment operations after its merger with Active Super. 

The combined fund, still without an official name, will become an entity managing around $30 billion of retirement savings after 1 March 2025, when a successor fund transfer is due to take place.  

Active Super is the larger one of the two partners by assets under management (AUM). It oversees $14.7 billion whereas Vision Super manages $13.9 billion.  

“It’s a privilege to be chosen to continue to lead the investment team post-merger, and I’m looking forward to bringing the portfolios together and building on our strong foundations,” Wyrsch said.

The new larger fund means opportunities to do things in a different way from what we did as smaller funds, which will be an exciting challenge for the team.”

Investment Magazine understands that the current Active Super CIO, Craig Turnbull, will not take up any position in the new fund.  

Vision Super’s MySuper option returned 7.76 per cent in the last 10 years on an annualised basis, as of 31 December 2024. Active Super has a lifecycle MySuper product, but its balanced investment option returned 7.22 per cent.  

The partnership is another one of the so-called “merger of equals”, where smaller funds choose to pursue scale and not to be absorbed into a much larger peer. 

Several similar partnerships in train include Mine Super and TWUSuper, which will become Team Super in March 2025, and Equip Super and TelstraSuper, which are amidst the due diligence process. CareSuper and Spirit Super, which came together on 1 November 2024, shared the same philosophy.  

One complication when small funds merge with each other is that it is not always immediately clear who in the executive team gets to keep their jobs when there is a duplication of responsibilities. For example, when it comes to investment, judging by who has been overseeing the larger AUM is not always a scientific approach, as demonstrated in the Vision/Active Super case and the Care/Spirit Super case, where Suzanne Branton who managed fewer assets was chosen as the ongoing CareSuper CIO.  

But the scale that comes with merging two small funds does create room for organisational innovations. Team Super, for instance, on Friday appointed Sarah Forman as chief retirement officer – neither Mine Super nor TWUSuper housed the role before. Forman is formerly head of advice at Aware Super. 

Vision Super CEO Stephen Rowe will lead the combined fund after its merger with Active Super, the funds said in a June 2024 update. The latter’s current CEO Phil Stockwell will not take up any position in the new fund.  

No other executive appointments have been publicly announced yet. 

The merged fund will be internally administered with Vision Super’s Acurity Registry platform, which it has used since 2016. 

– Additional reporting by Simon Hoyle.

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