With a young, predominantly female and relatively low-balance membership, Rest Super faces some specific issues helping its members enjoy their best-possible retirement. Interim chief member officer Andrew Ford says Rest’s strategy is to engage early, on members’ terms, and to make complex issues seem as simple as possible.
Adviser relationships, operational uplift and member services will all be arrows in the quiver of profit-to-member funds as they try to keep members from switching to platforms that desperately need to refresh their own demographics.
A near-$10 billion windfall from superannuation fund taxes revealed in the 2025-26 Budget has prompted calls for additional support for the retirements of low-income earners. Overall, the superannuation sector emerged unscathed from Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ fourth Budget, the last before a Federal election expected to be called within days.
Australian asset owners are eyeing a more volatile macro backdrop as they try to find their way to the end of the AI story abroad and wrestle with heightened regulatory scrutiny at home.
The government has split the eagerly awaited second tranche of its Delivering Better Financial Outcomes reforms in two, with part one (released on Friday) dealing with collective charging for advice and with “targeted prompts” or nudges. But trickier issues such as reforming the Best Interests Duty and introducing a new class of adviser will have to wait – to a date yet to be determined.
The role of IFM Investors in arranging a visit by a delegation of Australian super funds to the US last month gives a pointer to the scale of the longer-term ambitions of the global super-fund-owned asset manager, and a recent investment in the manager by the UK pension fund NEST is designed to give it even greater clout. IFM chair Cath Bowtell tells Investment Magazine the manager aims to be a partner to governments around the world as they seek capital to build critical infrastructure.
In these difficult times, one thing you can control is fees, writes Michael Block – so investors need to make they’re getting value for money, and every little bit helps.
A decision to switch careers led Kate Misic from working with telescopes to working with a $30 billion superannuation investment team, and as Telstra Super chief investment officer of nine years Graeme Miller steps away, Misic is stepping up.
Despite the apparent chaos and US President Donald Trump’s many idiosyncrasies – and those of the people he’s surrounded by – it does not signal that the US is declining in either power or influence, and a ‘new equilibrium’ will emerge, the Fiduciary Investors Symposium in Singapore heard.
Back in 2015, five big superannuation funds thought their administration nightmare was finally over. But it was only just beginning – and they still might not have reached the end.
Despite a prevailing belief to the contrary, super funds that have internalised investment management often terminate their own teams and strategies faster than they would an external manager, according to research house Chant West.
The “sound and fury” of the Trump Administration is colliding with the “hopes and dreams” that have animated equity markets for the better part of a decade. But Aware thinks its members – young and old – can still benefit from the chaos.
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Investment Magazine provides in-depth, monthly analysis of trends and developments for all the businesses in which superannuation funds engage‚ including asset allocation, investment manager selection, custody and fund accounting, member administration, group insurance and compliance.
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