Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia

Rates, regulation and redistribution are all increasing. Are investors entering a new regime of higher inflation and volatility? What impact does this environment have on valuations, particularly as central banks reduce their influence? What investment style is most conducive to this market regime?

A capital allocator’s dilemma in a zero-yield world with higher inflation is how to construct a robust, balanced portfolio that can also withstand equity-market sell-offs.

Alternative strategies can be incredibly useful as a flexible tool to solve risk and return problems, but they are largely under utilised by asset owners in Australia. Alternative strategies form a key part of the Future Fund’s portfolio toolkit. This session examined how the use of hedge funds and alternative strategies has evolved over time for Australia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Market inefficiencies can erupt due to temporary supply and demand imbalances, regulation, information asymmetries and market psychology among other reasons. This session explored how to exploit these opportunities in a market-neutral manner.

Managing a portfolio during a bull run is easy. The challenge comes in protecting clients during severe market downturns. What does the design and implementation of portfolios that can withstand market surprises look like?

Prior to joining Blackstone, Joe Dowling led Brown University’s endowment fund, as chief executive and previously a chief investment officer. Over trailing three, five, and 10-year periods, Brown endowment is placed in the top ventile of its peers, according to data maintained by Cambridge Associates. This session drew on his experience to discuss the lessons learned for using hedge funds to enhance long-term risk-adjusted return.

As the role of bonds as a diversifier dwindles, what are the alternatives? This session looked at the replacements for bond strategies including volatility strategies, and the benefits and challenges associated with this path.

The Your Future Your Super (YFYS) reforms challenge the use of absolute return funds. In this exclusive keynote David Bell, executive director of The Conexus Institute, released new research on how funds can not only live with the YFYS performance test, but demonstrate a pathway forward which is consistent with asset owner best practice, namely total portfolio management.

The Your Future Your Super reforms have created challenges for absolute return funds. This session covered the impact from the suggested benchmarking to passive indices reforms and the unintended consequences. It looked at how industry is facing into these challenges and what the path ahead for the asset class looks like.

Welcome remarks from Brett Clark at TAL Australia.

This session considered the challenges faced by the whole insurance industry, both locally and abroad. Further analysis will consider the role for international best practice, AI and behavioural economics in improving engagement.

• Is there an ongoing role for group insurance within superannuation?
• Can insurance ever move beyond being a grudge purchase?
• What innovations can we expect around products, experience and affordability?

A perennial challenge in making life insurance well understood and embraced by the public is the perceived gap between the promise and what is ultimately delivered when it comes time to claim. This session explored the gaps and how a more universal approach or innovations in terms can help to reduce complexity.

• How does group insurance sit alongside other worker compensation schemes?
• How do we make sure consumers understand the risks when part-time or unemployed?
• Would enforcing the voluntary code improve member outcomes?

In its role as prudential regulator for insurance and superannuation, APRA oversees both sides of the provision of group insurance in superannuation. Recently APRA released a letter critical of how insurers and super funds are working together. This session explored the regulatory framework for provision of group insurance in super, with respective specialists from the two APRA divisions. This session explored the overarching regulation of provision of group insurance in superannuation. It also explored the challenges of the current environment, particularly those associated with the stapling aspects of the Your Future, Your Super (YFYS) reforms.

China’s growth an evolution as an economic super power is a critical long-term issue for institutional investors. This session examined the risks and opportunities in the Chinese equities markets and how investors can best gain access.

Opening this event, which brings delegates back together in-person, CIOs will share the risks and opportunities they have been exploring and how they are positioning for the portfolio of the future.

This session will look at the processes, people and governance that marks best practice for very large asset owners, and for Australian investors it discusses the path to getting there.

A total portfolio approach overcomes the governance, benchmark and inertia drags inherent in strategic asset allocation and can add up to 100 basis points above SAA, according to its proponents. This session examines the benefits of TPA including improved dynamism and why Australia’s asset owners should be embracing it.

In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was limited to a disruption to the Chinese economy, Warwick McKibbon explored seven different scenarios of how the virus might evolve and using his own modelling technique examined the impacts of different scenarios on macroeconomic outcomes and financial markets. He discusses that model, which is now being used by many central banks around the world, and what the ongoing pandemic means for the global economy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Norman Swan became of the face of the ongoing health crisis and how we all need to adjust to living with COVID.

The Future Fund embarked on an ambitious project instigated during the COVID crisis which includes a reconsideration of investment assumptions and a questioning of key themes as the investment team endeavours to navigate an environment that includes lower for longer, greater geopolitical risk, inflation risk and changing asset class correlations. This session looks at that project including a re-evaluation of the board’s appetite for risk, a review of investment beliefs and the fund’s comparative advantages.

This session outlines the key characteristics of the current policy environment and the implications for markets, and examines a flexible but comprehensive framework for portfolio management that can be applied to improve the stability of returns and engineer for outperformance.

China is a simultaneous threat and an opportunity for investors. This session, with insights from one of the world’s foremost experts on geopolitics, looks at how to navigate a worsening geopolitical situation and what it means for economic growth. Is the current course a steady state, or are big shocks, for the better or for the worse, possible and even likely?

This session will look at the intricate details of the merger between Sunsuper and QSuper. It will discuss the philosophical motivations, the various cost savings and investment opportunities of a large entity, and the investment model of the future.