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Ausfund cements ERF leadership
The industry funds-backed Ausfund has emerged as the top-rated eligible rollover fund (ERF), as judged by leading consultancy The Heron Partnership.
The Heron Partnership carried out an assessment of the 15 ERFs operating in Australia and announced that Ausfund had been rated Australia’s most outstanding ERF, awarding it five Heron Quality Stars.
The research house pointed out that no other ERF had been awarded the rating, with the second ranked fund, Supertrace, being awarded four Heron Quality Stars.
Commenting on the outcome of the research, the managing director of The Heron Partnership, Chris Butler, said there was a wide gap between the overall quality of Ausfund and the other ERFs in the market.
He said this had been the second year the Heron Partnership had undertaken an assessment of ERFs, and it was the second time Ausfund had been rated number one.
“Although there has been some improvement in the ratings of some of the other ERFs over the past couple of years, none currently come close to Ausfund,” he said.
“Through the Heron Quality Star Ratings assessment process, the maximum score a product can achieve is 100,” Butler said. “Ausfund was awarded a score of 90.75.”
The executive director of The Heron Partnership, Wendy Barton, led the ERF assessment and said Ausfund had emerged as a well-established, not for profit ERF with an experienced trustee.
“It is fourth largest in terms of assets and the largest in terms of members, yet it has one of the lowest average account balances,” she said.
Barton said besides these organisational features, the other reasons Ausfund had done so well included:
* It has the lowest fees, costing only $10 per year, with a small investment management fee. For an account balance of $2,000, the cost is 0.94 per cent, well below the 2 per cent cost a member could typically pay in a retail fund;
There are no entry or exit costs;
It offers what we believe is a very appropriate investment strategy for an ERF, with a smoothed crediting rate, and utilises the services of specialist investment advisers;
Superpartners administer the ERF and is well known for its high volume capacity;
It has a proactive and demonstrated approach to locating members and transferring them out;
It produces timely and informative annual reports and Product Disclosure Statements for members; and
They have a dedicated website that is easy to follow and allows the downloading of rollover forms, instant searches to determine if they hold any individual’s money (using name and date of birth) and direct links to the AustralianTaxation Office’s Superseeker website.
Explaining his firm’s methodology in assessing the ERFs, Butler said the primary goal was to provide a realistic and objective representation of the strengths and weaknesses of the product.
“The ratings are based on feature-specific benchmarks which guide Heron’s assessors to rate the feature objectively, with all products therefore being rated on the exact same basis,” he said.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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