Ambitious plans for Mercer as merger doubles FUM

The acquisition of BT Super with Mercer will help advance Mercer on its mission to be the best superannuation fund in the market while members could see more than 25% fee reduction.

It was announced last week that Westpac and BT Funds Management had entered into a heads of agreement to merge BT’s personal and corporate superannuation fund with Mercer Super Trust, subject to regulatory approval.

Speaking to Money Management, Tim Barber, head of Mercer Super, said he hoped the merger would bring about greater scale, fee reductions and improved service for members.

He said: “This creates a new benchmark for super funds in Australia and our ambition is to be the very best superannuation fund in the market. This adds to our global scale and makes our funds under management grow from $30 billion to $65 billion.

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“This provides a platform to do things much better for our members and we’re focused on doing the transition period really well, that’s the job of both teams over the coming months. The scale allows us to improve our offering for members and provide a number of improvements for them to be the very best fund in the market.”

Barber said 400 colleagues would be moving from BT Super to Mercer which would enable Mercer to have an expanded investment offering.

The scale would also allow Mercer to make fee reductions with most members seeing a fee cut of 25% or more from the first half of next year.

BT Super chair, Gai McGrath, said: “Mercer, whose multi-manager funds manage more than $500 billion in assets globally, has been a retirement and investment specialist in Australia for more than 40 years. They are well placed to support our BT Super members and participating employers into the future”.