The key to implementing a successful total portfolio approach is not about creating complexities, but rather maintaining simplicity within the shared lexicon of an investment team, said two of TPA’s best-known adopters.
Australia has been the Asia Pacific region’s top recipient of Canadian pension fund investment flows, accounting for 45 per cent of all flows from 2003 to 2018. Canada’s so-called Maple 8 have made big investments in Australia in sectors such as agriculture, energy infrastructure and telecommunications. But there are question marks over whether Canadian money will continue flowing freely into the country.
Life insurer TAL has appointed Fiona Macgregor as the new group CEO and managing director, filling in the position made empty by Brett Clark’s promotion to CEO and managing director of Dai-ichi Life Group, TAL’s parent company.
Cbus Super has appointed Martha Georgiou as chief risk officer.
Singapore-headquartered Temasek entered a binding agreement with Australian ETF provider Betashares to invest up to $300 million.
Discussions at the most recent Fiduciary Investors Symposium made it clear that super funds have different opinions on how much exposure to active management they want in portfolios. However, what they agreed on more was a belief that active managers still play an important role in the market – that active management is not dead, and asset allocators don’t want it to be.
The gap between the median administration fee for retail and profit-to-member funds has closed over the last 15 years, research from Super Ratings has found. The researcher noted it’s now “fiendishly difficult” for funds to differentiate themselves based on fees.
ASFA CEO Mary Delahunty has distanced herself from comments made by Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert
this week insinuating that financial advisers are “dodgy”. The two peak bodies, which have increasingly large membership overlap, are also at odds over the contentious issue of advice fee deductions from super funds.
The power of artificial intelligence to make sense of huge volumes of data and produce real business gains has obvious appeal for asset owners. Working out how to apply the technology can be overwhelming, but the Fiduciary Investors Symposium heard that the most important thing is to start.
AustralianSuper has been trimming its bond portfolio as a portion of total assets on the expectation that global interest rates have peaked. Head of fixed income, currency and cash Katie Dean says she draws on her background as an economist to meet the challenges of managing a $50 billion portfolio for the nation’s largest super fund.
Somewhat similar to Australia’s increasingly concentrated superannuation space, the $6 trillion Canadian pension market is dominated by the so-called Maple 8 public pension funds, whose model has long provided stellar learning materials for the world. But OMERS chief executive Blake Hutcheson, overseeing a Maple fund, questioned whether bundling them all together is appropriate.
Super funds have recouped some of the April losses in May and pushed the financial year to date (FYTD) return for balanced funds to 8.1 per cent, according to research house SuperRatings.
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