Ahead of the Conference of Major Superannuation Funds this week, Super Review had a look at the returns of some of the biggest players on the superannuation stage and found that there’s little to support the traditional industry versus retail divide, at least amongst MySuper options.
For the three years to last month’s end, Sunsuper’s, which arguably straddles the line between industry and retail more than any other fund, MySuper option was the best performing of the funds looked at, delivering annualised returns of 10.41 per cent.
The biggest industry player, AustralianSuper, was just behind it on 10.36 per cent, with a large retail offering, BT’s Super for Life, also coming close with returns of 9.01 per cent. As this is a lifecycle offering, the data selected was for the stage with the largest funds under management at the moment, which was the offering for members born in the 1980s.
While returns over the five years to 28 February, this year, were lower than their three-year counterparts, they were also similarly close for the five MySuper options selected. AustralianSuper’s offering had the highest, at 8.62 per cent, followed by Sunsuper on 8.3 per cent, and MLC’s MasterKey Super Horizon 4 Balanced option, REST’s Core Strategy option, and BT’s Super for Life 1980s option with returns of 7.29, 6.91, and 6.54 per cent respectively.
Although this range would add up to a lot over a lifetime, the approximately two percentage points difference in returns amongst the five funds over five years and under 1.5 percentage points difference over three years is still notably small.
Furthermore, all five options outperformed the Mixed Asset Growth and Balanced benchmarks, both of which reflect what MySuper growth and balanced options, which the above all are, look like on average. The chart below shows the extent of the outperformance over five years.
[[{“fid”:”5703″,”view_mode”:”default”,”fields”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false},”type”:”media”,”field_deltas”:{“1”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false}},”attributes”:{“style”:”height: 360px; width: 620px;”,”class”:”media-element file-default”,”data-delta”:”1″}}]]
Hannah,
no disrespect intended with the following comment – but its borderline meaningless. Industry funds are not comparable to retail funds. It is nothing more than a game of semantics. To make a comparison like with like one must be able to have a look at a few fundamental considerations – one of which is a look through to the valuation approach of the assests – and more importantly – risk return measures, noting only expressed in standard deviation and sharpe ratio – We would consider those rather fundamental to any form of comparsion. – It is widely understood that industry funds lack transparency – and lack the alignment of investor expectations with forecast returns (a process something similar trust me I am a doctor and this wont hurt a bit). Its disengenious to compare in the way that you have.