Difficulties meeting the three day turn around for member transfers, a statutory obligation from January 1, 2014, has brought renewed concern at the practicality of super funds coping with regulation. Graeme Arnott, chief operating officer at First State Super, said that his fund and much of the industry were under “immense pressure” to carry out … Read more
Sunsuper is claiming a big growth in small employer clients from searches carried out on Google with the term ‘pay super simple’. The fund appears as the second highest search result for this term, the ranking for which is determined by the popularity of the link and the closeness of the search term to the … Read more
The use of ETFs in Australia has grown almost 50 per cent since the beginning of 2013 reaching just shy of $10bn in funds under management as at the end of December. While in the early years growth was driven by retail investors, recent activity suggests ETF uptake by institutional investors is on the … Read more
The chief investment officer behind one of the best performing funds of 2013 says comparisons of performance figures will be less relevant for members in 2014. Janice Sengupta of the Aon Master Trust has seen her fund’s Balanced Growth Active option ranked first in recent surveys by Chant West and SuperRatings. For the year to … Read more
Challenger is to delay the launch of its deferred lifetime annuity (DLA), after the government said it wanted a review of all post-retirement products before awarding them tax breaks. Earlier this year the Labor government had announced that the income from DLAs would receive a concessional tax break from July 1, 2014. Challenger had planned … Read more
SuperFriend has joined forces with Australia’s seven largest insurers to find ways of reducing the incidence of mental illness among insurance claimants. The charity created by industry superannuation funds is currently helping to scope a project to kick off early next year that will have findings by the end of 2014. The imperative for the … Read more
Despite being a sector which has always been required to maintain data on its members (i.e. customers), superannuation funds have been slow to embrace data analytics. Part of the reason for this is that administration systems designed primarily to record basic member data have typically not been flexible enough to readily provide more valuable information … Read more
Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing” Warren Buffet, an outstanding long-term investor. An investment philosophy is a roadmap for your fund. Imagine you are driving without a map or a GPS. All you have are signs that appear from time to time telling you what towns or villages are coming up and how … Read more
Chief financial officers from First State Super, Unisuper and Equip and leading advisors have called on the government and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority to better explain their intent on portfolio disclosure. They say sensible reform can only take place once this is explained. In a debate held at the Investment Magazine offices, the group … Read more
The only certainty in the discussion on superannuation board standards is that all sides agree there are some poor performing trustee directors out there. If the Coalition can deal with this in a way that does not cause excessive cost or disruption it will look very smart, but it won’t be easy. As conservatives the … Read more
QSuper has given a teasing snippet of its progress in placing default fund members into group cohorts. This month it moved $21.7 billion of savings for 440,000 members into separate group strategies designed for specific ages, account balance, contribution rate and gender, but has not revealed the nature of each strategy. The switch has occurred … Read more
Within the Superannuation industry, cost has become a key factor for funds. Legislative reforms now require trustees of MySuper funds to consider whether their scale disadvantages members. This approach of ‘encouraged consolidation’ is premised on the assumption that bigger funds deliver lower costs for members. The focus on costs is important because while investment returns … Read more
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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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