Vanguard Super’s APAC CIO Duncan Burns has discussed how the fund is plotting its next growth trajectory, having grown assets by 87 per cent in the past 12 months.
In its FY25-26 performance, the fund said its Lifecycle option, which the fund said is its default MySuper option for over half of its members, delivered 12.29 per cent for members aged 47 and under. Meanwhile, the fund’s diversified Balanced option delivered returns of 7.5 per cent while its High Growth option delivered 12.14 per cent.
This was supported by strong performance from global equities, it said, which was its strongest-performing asset class as well as US equities and Japan.
This financial year’s performance compared to gains of 13.5 per cent for the Lifecycle option and the diversified High Growth option and 9.9 per cent for the Balanced one in FY2024-25.
In terms of assets under management, the fund has grown from $3.2 billion last year to $6 billion.
Speaking to Super Review, Duncan Burns, Vanguard’s Asia Pacific chief investment officer, said: “We’ve had a fantastic year of strong growth and what’s really encouraging to us is that growth is being driven primarily by Aussies switching over to Vanguard Super. We were the fastest-growing APRA-regulated super fund by asset growth in 2025 and 2024 and that momentum has continued, we’re really proud of that trajectory.”
While it is not specifically targeting young people, Burns said they have been a popular cohort switching over to the fund.
“They are coming our way naturally, younger people know Vanguard as a brand and we’ve had strong performance since we launched.
“Our ETFs are hugely popular in Australia and they do have a younger skew to them so there may be an effect there that people know and love Vanguard for their ETFs and are expanding their exposure into superannuation.”
Having achieved success reaching individual investors, the next focus for fund will be on the financial advisory market.
“To date, our growth has been from individual Aussies switching but our next phase of growth is reaching investors through the adviser community so if someone has their account with an adviser then we’re trying to make that easy to bring their super options over to Vanguard.
“A big part of our business is advice and we’ve got a sales force dedicated towards advisers so we’re looking to build out technology to make it really easy for advisers to plug into Vanguard Super for their day-to-day operations and swing money over to Vanguard Super as part of their asset allocation.”
