When AFCA releases its official statistics for the past financial year, it will show the rate of increase in superannuation complaints has slowed. However, despite the Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones urging the industry to do better 12 months ago, complaints about delays in handling insurance claims remain the number one source of member disgruntlement.
The nation’s second-largest super fund, Australian Retirement Trust, has reshuffled its executive team in one of the first major moves under new CEO, David Anderson.
Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones has softened his tone on insufficiencies in trustees’ claims handling processes. However, he told the Investment Magazine Insurance in Super Summit that it’s “a bit early to claim success” on eliminating delays in insurance claims-handling, with room for improvement remaining.
Backed by two of the nation’s biggest super funds, AustralianSuper and HESTA, real estate managers Assemble and Super Housing Partnerships have merged to “further unlock” the capital flow across mid-market housing.
REST has made a US$75 million ($112 million) impact investment allocation to a private equity fund expected to “benefit from the long-term decarbonisation and deglobalisation of the global economy”.
Vanguard Super has appointed Robin Bowerman as a non-executive director on the trustee board.
Since Australian Retirement Trust’s inception, the industry has been waiting to see whether (or when) the now-$300 billion fund can draw level and overtake the nation’s largest player, the $335 billion AustralianSuper. With a boost to its AUM from the Qantas Super merger, ART could be one step closer to its ‘awakening’.
Ahead of her appearance at the Insurance in Super Summit on Tuesday, Australian Financial Complaints Authority lead superannuation ombudsman Heather Gray acknowledges that funds are “working hard” to increase resources and improve efficiency in responding to member queries. But with increasing political scrutiny around group insurance, funds need to go beyond “working hard” and actually come up with ways to better meet community expectations.
A mixed response to retirement income covenant obligations has prompted the regulators to urge super funds to move faster and move further. A new green paper proposes an approach that would leave the retirement income field open only to those funds that really want to provide a high standard offering.
While its financial year return is at the lower end of big funds, the Hostplus Balanced investment option still leads the pack when it comes to 10-year performance among growth-tilted funds, according to analysis by research houses SuperRatings and Chant West.
Equip Super has posted a 9.23 per cent return for its balanced growth option in FY24, while the MySuper option delivered a 9.24 per cent return.
Despite a slowdown in private equity transactions and some challenges in exiting funds, liquidity from recent mergers has given the $32 billion Brighter Super plenty of confidence to build out the asset class allocation to around 5 per cent of the portfolio.
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