The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has recently released its draft guide on sustainability collaboration, but investors, businesses, and other groups have politely – and not so politely – told the competition watchdog that its principles need to be more flexible and accommodating.
Australia’s $212 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, has restructured its investment team which will be overseen by a six-person investment leadership group including five new managing directors reporting to chief investment officer Ben Samild.
Prime Value Asset Management has appointed former Prime Super chief executive Lachlan Baird as chief financial officer.
Regulators remain eager for super funds to further progress their retirement income strategies, but a handful of funds are demonstrating pathways forward. David Bell and Geoff Warren examine the emerging best practice of combining support and guidance mechanisms with retirement solutions.
The AI boom is nearing its end, according to Thijs Knaap, chief economist at APG, the Dutch asset manager overseeing €577 billion ($950 billion) on behalf of 4.6 million participants across a range of different pension funds. He warns that every innovation, including AI, experiences a peak of inflation expectations which are not fully realised.
The biggest risk many super fund members face is not investment volatility but rather not accumulating enough to live on in retirement. Australian Retirement Trust head of investment strategy Andrew Fisher takes Investment Magazine behind the scenes of a migration that saw 1.4 million members moved to a higher-risk, higher-return investment strategy, designed to help them accumulate more at retirement.
ASIC could launch enforcement action against super funds whose handling of death benefit claims falls short, ASIC commissioner in charge of superannuation Simone Constant has warned. She says a joint regulatory approach gives ASIC and APRA better oversight of how funds are performing on matters that are critical to members.
Hostplus chief investment officer Sam Sicilia has declared that for as long as he and chief executive David Elia are overseeing the $110 billion fund, there will be no investment internalisation. However, he acknowledges that if the institutional asset manager business model comes too much under pressure, it poses risks and instability to Hostplus’ externalisation model.
NZ Super has returned close to 15 per cent in the 2024 financial year as tech enthusiasm and declining inflation resulted in a strong run in global equities. However, one of the fund’s main value-adds, the strategic tilting programme, has had a rare negative return.
MLC Life Insurance has appointed Gerard Kerr as chief executive of individual business and Jane McGovern as its chief customer and strategy officer.
Industry super fund Hostplus has launched a digital education tool, SuperSmart, in collaboration with super fund licensee and advice services providers, Industry Fund Services, and Iress.
ASIC has had a success rate of 95 per cent in its civil and criminal prosecutions conducted in the first half of 2024 calendar year, securing $32.2 million in civil penalties and nine criminal convictions.
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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.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this land upon which Conexus Financial sits, the Cadigal of the Eora Nation. We recognise their continuing connection and unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, waters and community. We pay our deepest respects to them and their culture, and to Elders both past and present.
