UniSuper chief investment officer, John Pearce, has shared his thinking behind why the $158 billion superannuation fund is yet to invest in cryptocurrency.
Speaking at the annual congress of the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) in Perth, Pearce discussed the superannuation’s fund approach to cryptocurrency on a panel.
He said: “I have very strong views on this and we categorically don’t invest in crypto, I incur the wrath of my younger colleagues who call me a ‘neanderthal’ but we are the fiduciary stewards of superannuation, we are not punting money.
“We think of our assets as our parents’ life savings, money they have worked for all their lives and they are trusting us to invest it for them. One of our guiding principles as a super fund is that this money is people’s life savings and if that is your guiding principle then I don’t see a role for crypto in that.
“As fiduciary stewards, I’d say no.”
Also appearing on the panel, AMP deputy chief economist Diana Mousina took an opposite view and said the super fund had a small percentage to the asset via crypto futures.
“Crypto will be regulated in the future but bitcoin will remain a more volatile asset so investors should expect that volatility. There are also question marks around how it correlates with what is going on in public markets. But it has long-term use cases and if there’s more regulation then it will be positive for the sector.
“More and more super funds are going to have to have the capabilities to do it so you do want to have a small portion of your portfolio invested in crypto. We have a lot of people in our investment team who are positive on it.”
UniSuper is not the only super fund who is negative on the role of cryptocurrency as MLC Super chief investment officer, Dan Farmer, said last month that the $86 billion fund was yet to add exposure.
“The one that’s waxing and waning for us is things like Bitcoin which is a digital version of gold. We don’t have Bitcoin in the asset mix at the moment for a whole bunch of reasons, we don’t think it is mature enough yet but I won’t say we are never going to do anything and will look at it,” Farmer said.
