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Have you ever looked at your super fund’s investment returns and thought “that looks pretty good” or “that’s disappointing’’, and wondered how your fund compares with similar funds? Is it a consistently high performer or an inveterate underachiever?
Thanks to super research company Chant West, we can now help you answer those questions. Chant West has allowed us to share with you their performance rankings for 226 super investment options and 159 pension investment options in their database. You can see the full list at the bottom of this page.
Important
Super funds offer a range of pre-mixed investment options, with labels such as Balanced, Growth and Conservative. The labels may differ slightly from fund to fund and, just to confuse matters, so does the percentage of growth assets (such as shares and listed property) in similarly labelled options.
For example, you may be in your fund’s Balanced option which has 70% growth assets. Your friend is a member of a different super fund, and while she is also in an investment option with 70% growth assets, her fund labels it as its Growth option.
This highlights the importance of knowing the level of growth assets, and hence risk, in your investment option so you can compare like with like.
Chant West’s investment options rankings are sorted into five risk categories which align with the investment options offered by most super funds. Within each of these five categories, rather than simply providing you with a percentage return, your fund’s investment option performance is ranked according to the quartile it falls within.
This information is difficult to get elsewhere without a financial adviser.
How does it work?
1. For over 50 different funds, their super and pension investment options have been categorised into the following risk categories:
- All Growth (96-100% growth assets)
- High Growth (81-95% growth assets)
- Growth (61-80% growth assets)
- Balanced (41-60% growth assets)
- Conservative (21-40% growth assets)
2. The performance for these investment options has then been ranked across eight different timeframes (to 31 March 2020):
- 3 months
- Financial year to date
- 1 year
- 3 years
- 5 years
- 7 years
- 10 years
- 15 years
3. For each of these timeframes you can see whether a fund’s investment option ranked in Quartile 1 (top 25%), Quartile 2 (next 25%), Quartile 3 (following 25%) or Quartile 4 (bottom 25%). See below for an explanation on quartiles
4. You can also check the median return for funds in the top and bottom quartiles, along with the return for the median fund’s in the category.
You can view a 2 minute overview of how it works below:
What is a quartile?
Quartiles divide a range of data points into four roughly equal groups. In this context, investment options in each of Chant West’s five risk categories – All Growth, High Growth, Growth, Balanced and Conservative – are divided into four roughly equal groups according to their performance.
The top 25% of investment options ranked by performance are in Quartile 1 for each period, the next 25% are in Quartile 2, the following 25% are in Quartile 3 and the bottom 25% are in Quartile 4.
For example, below is a fictional set of results for one category across one timeframe. The results are ordered by return, and you can see that the first 5 funds are in Quartile 1 because they have the best results, then the next 5 performing funds and in Quartile 2, and so on.
| Fund / Investment option | Return | Quartile |
|---|---|---|
| Fund H | 5.2% | 1 |
| Fund B | 5.0% | 1 |
| Fund L | 4.8% | 1 |
| Fund D | 4.7% | 1 |
| Fund O | 4.5% | 1 |
| Fund F | 4.4% | 2 |
| Fund N | 4.4% | 2 |
| Fund Q | 4.3% | 2 |
| Fund E | 4.3% | 2 |
| Fund J | 4.3% | 2 |
| Fund A | 4.3% | 3 |
| Fund R | 4.2% | 3 |
| Fund M | 4.2% | 3 |
| Fund I | 4.1% | 3 |
| Fund S | 4.1% | 3 |
| Fund P | 4.0% | 4 |
| Fund K | 4.0% | 4 |
| Fund T | 3.9% | 4 |
| Fund C | 3.7% | 4 |
| Fund G | 3.7% | 4 |
Note: Quartile rankings for super funds are net of investment fees and tax but before admin fees, and for pension funds are net of investment fees.
Why use quartiles?
By using quartiles, it allows you to see how your fund is performing in relation to all the investment options in the same risk category, without focusing on an isolated percentage return figure out of context, which can be misleading.
For example, you may find that after several years of strong returns your fund suddenly reports a negative return. You panic and wonder if you should switch to a better-performing fund. Then you check your fund’s quartile ranking and find that despite reporting a negative return it ranked in the top quartile. This reassures you that all investment options are experiencing difficult market conditions and that your fund is responding better than most.
Or your fund may have been reporting positive annual returns, but you begin to question if it is performing as well as it should. You check its quartile performance and see that it has been consistently ranked in quartiles 3 and 4, below the average for its category. In this case, it may be worth doing further research to find the cause. Is it asset selection, high fees or some other issue?
If you find that your fund is a consistently poor performer for its risk category, you might consider switching funds. But you should only consider doing this after researching and comparing a number of super funds, not just on performance but also on offerings such as fees, insurance, advice and other member services.
Who is Chant West?
Chant West is a research company that has been analysing super fund performance for more than 20 years. They are a publicly listed company that provides independent analysis to super funds, employers and individuals.
Super funds included in the quartile performance tables are those that participate in Chant West’s Multi-Manager (Performance) Survey which includes all major super funds. The tables include MySuper default options that are available as choice options as well as other choice options. They exclude lifestage strategies where members remain in the one investment option for the remainder of their membership (eg. the BT Super 1970s Lifestage Fund).
Think long-term
It’s important to remember that super is a marathon not a sprint, so consistent high performance over the long run is what matters. If your fund’s ranking slipped over the past three months or year but is in the top two quartiles over periods of five to 15 years, for example, then it may be worth keeping an eye on the situation and doing a bit of digging into the cause. However, it is never a good idea to switch funds based solely on short-term performance.
Super fund rankings
There are 226 super fund investment options ranked across the five risk categories:
Pension fund rankings
There are 159 pension fund investment options ranked across the five risk categories:
Note: Your fund may use a different category label. The important thing is to check your fund against others with a similar exposure to growth assets.
Super funds list
In the list below you can see which super fund investment options are included in the rankings. You can click in the right hand column to go to that category.
Pension funds list
In the list below you can see which pension fund investment options are included in the rankings. You can click in the right hand column to go to that category.
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