Line-up of industry experts to choose best superannuation funds

Conexus Financial, the publisher of Investment Magazine and Professional Planner will again recognise outstanding achievement in superannuation when it hosts the third Superannuation Fund of the Year Awards Evening in Sydney in May. The awards have evolved to embrace input from key industry stakeholders, whose experience and expertise will be integral to identifying the best funds … Read more

Paul Sayer to become CEO of TWU Super

Paul Sayer is to leave his post as chief operating officer of REST Superannuation to become chief executive of TWU Super. Sayer will become the fourth chief executive TWU Super in the space of two years. Debora Jackson, who took over from Bill McMillin in January 2013, left the fund towards the end of last … Read more

In praise of trustees

The trustee system means the public does not have to be investment experts. Gerard Noonan believes it is time for politicians and policy makers to accept these merits. I’ve been involved in superannuation since industry funds were established for working people in the 1980s. Over those years, many high-minded national inquiries – from the Cooper … Read more

Cbus reveals soaring TPD claims

Cbus has disclosed figures showing TPD claims from members have nearly doubled in two years. There were 798 TPD claims paid in the financial year ending 2012 totalling $45 million, while claims in the financial year ending 2014 totalled 1296 and paid out $88 million. Cbus has set new standards for transparency in its annual … Read more

One step at a time to LDI

Large superannuation funds are having a conversation about how they can move to offer their members a greater form of liability driven investment (LDI). Broadly LDI is an investment target that is stated and then aimed for, a target sum or a target range of money that will offer members a decent or acceptable income … Read more

Why we cannot resist tactical asset allocation

“We cannot suppress the powerful intuition that what makes sense in hindsight today was predictable yesterday. The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.” Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize Winner, in Thinking, Fast and Slow. “The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good.” … Read more

Anne Whittaker to retire in December

Anne Whittaker, chief investment officer of Australian Catholic Super is to retire and will leave in December after more than six years at the fund. The $6.2 billion fund has been working with a head hunter to find a replacement after Whittaker revealed her plans in July. Richard Haddock, chair of the fund, said the … Read more

Conservative options face grim five-year forecast

A scenario analysis tool developed by Frontier Advisors is confronting superannuation funds with the likelihood that their return objectives could be difficult to achieve over the medium term. The consultant has been offering its web based Prism tool to clients since April to allow them to carry out stress testing of portfolios and to see … Read more

Wolf of Wall Street litigator to visit Melbourne and Sydney

One of the world’s leading financial services litigation lawyers is to make a keynote address at the IMCA annual conference in Sydney (on December 3) and Melbourne (December 4). Joel Cohen, a former federal prosecutor in New York, well-known for his role in prosecuting Jordan Belfort “The Wolf of Wall Street”, will be speaking at … Read more

Superpartners: The journey to Rhodes

“You really should visit our offices in Rhodes”. In a sector renowned for thinning profit margins and risky, expensive product development, the ebullience of Link Group has stood out. So it is little surprise the chief executives of AustralianSuper, Cbus, HESTA, HOSTPLUS, MTAA Super have taken the taxi ride to Rhodes in Western Sydney and … Read more

Three funds move into social impact investment space

The $31 billion QBE investment portfolio is to place $100m in social impact bonds in the belief that opportunities for such investments will expand greatly in the years to come. It is part of a general move to diversify assets in the QBE portfolio, which until now has been dominated by developed world government and … Read more