POWERED BY MOMENTUM MEDIA
Balanced in-house management can lead to lower costs
Veteran superannuation chair, Gerard Noonan, believes super funds need their balance their desire to internalise with external management but, over time, it will reduce the cost of investing for members.
Speaking on a podcast for the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST), Noonan, who was a former chair of Media Super until September 2020 and former AIST president, said funds were increasingly looking to manage assets without third-party managers.
Moving management in-house had been a popular move recently although funds were divided on its benefits as it also came with drawbacks such as talent retention. UniSuper, for example, had more than 70% of its fund managed in-house while others such as Hostplus preferred outsourcing the task.
Noonan said: “Funds now increasingly are saying, ‘Look, why do we pay so much to fund managers? Why can’t we manage the assets ourselves?
“We don’t necessarily want to do the whole lot ourselves. We can get a balance there. But I think over time, you’ll see the cost of investing slowly drop, and that will include external managers as well.”
Having worked as a journalist for 40 years on titles such as the Australian Financial Review and Sydney Morning Herald, he also reflected on the importance of the equal representation model between employer and employee.
“I’ve been on these boards for the best part of three decades. And there’s been terrific cooperation between the employer representatives and union/employee representatives. I’ve never seen anything divide along employer and employee lines as far as decision making is concerned,” he said.
“And the reason is that we’re fiduciaries, we understood our tasks and our responsibilities. There was sometimes a little bit of the natural tension that occurs in the industrial relations world. And so we kept each other honest by making sure that we had the interests of our members at heart.”
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
Laura Dew is editor at Super Review. Prior to joining SR, she spent five years working at Investment Week in the UK covering asset and wealth management.
Recommended for you
The lower outlook for inflation has set the stage for another two rate cuts over the first half of 2026, according to Westpac.
With private asset valuations emerging as a key concern for both regulators and the broader market, Apollo Global Management has called on the corporate regulator to issue clear principles on valuation practices, including guidance on the disclosures it expects from market participants.
Institutional asset owners are largely rethinking their exposure to the US, with private markets increasingly being viewed as a strategic investment allocation, new research has shown.
Australia’s corporate regulator has been told it must quickly modernise its oversight of private markets, after being caught off guard by the complexity, size, and opacity of the asset class now dominating institutional portfolios.
TOP PERFORMING FUNDS
ACS FIXED INT - AUSTRALIA/GLOBAL BOND
Fund name
3y(%)pa
1
DomaCom DFS Mortgage
92.15 3 y p.a(%)
2
Global X 21Shares Bitcoin ETF
53.24 3 y p.a(%)
3
Global X GlobalX FANG+ ETF
43.15 3 y p.a(%)
4
DomaCom Shoreline North Coogee
36.26 3 y p.a(%)
5
GAM LSA Private Shares AU I
35.87 3 y p.a(%)
