Super funds of the year awards: Best super funds for 2021/2022

Chant West’s Super Fund of the Year 2021 was announced last week at the awards as AustralianSuper.

AustralianSuper’s big strength is their investments. AustralianSuper has experienced investment professionals who have managed money in all different asset classes before at fund managers and now they’ve come across to AustralianSuper. And each of the asset classes that they manage money in, they’ve done really well. Both in Australian shares, international shares, fixed interest.

But perhaps one of the areas where AustralianSuper, and indeed a number of the big super funds do really well, is in the area of unlisted assets. Things like property, infrastructure and private equity. And while smaller funds might go to a fund that invest in an unlisted fund to access those investments, AustralianSuper is big enough that they can go direct and they can buy an infrastructure asset themselves, or they can go as a co-investor with a large international investor for one of these investments.

That gives them access to the sort of investments that a lot of smaller funds couldn’t get access to, and getting access at really low fees, which enables AustralianSuper to get really good results for members but by keeping the cost down of investing.

AustralianSuper’s performance over most periods has been outstanding. Over any period from five, seven, 10, 15 years. They are the top MySuper performer for your standard 70/30 investment option. So their investment model is really good and they’ve shown that in terms of performance over a long period of time.

One of the other things that AustralianSuper has done over the past few years is pull together a lot of the strands of member services so that they’re able to communicate to members in ways that are relevant to them and suggest actions for members that will grow their super in a personalised way.

In order to do that, AustralianSuper has had to corral a lot of the member information that they have. Not just account balances and investment options, but things like how a member interacts on the web, the sort of things they call the contact centre about, what they’re doing in terms of the member app. A whole range of other things. What AustralianSuper does is they get all that information, put it together and use algorithms to work out what is the most likely thing a member can do, which will give them the most benefit in terms of their superannuation.

And then they construct communications sent out to members to nudge them along that path. Have you thought about doing this? We say that this member services side is really important to drive positive behaviour that, if done well, can actually have a similar result as really good investment returns. If a member is putting more money in over a long period of time, that can have a big impact on someone’s retirement outcome.

The other two funds in terms of the top three for Super Fund of the Year were UniSuper and Sunsuper.

UniSuper has, once again, a world class investment team and have had people who have been working at the big fund managers and earning a lot of money now coming to manage money, especially in the Australian shares area for UniSuper members. UniSuper behaves a bit differently in terms of how they invest in Australian shares. Rather than just saying ‘we’ll invest in line with the market’, they’ll take positions of conviction. If there’s a company that they believe is undervalued, they’ll make a large investment in that.

Another thing they do is, rather than investing a lot in unlisted assets, unlisted property, unlisted infrastructure, they’ll look for listed vehicles that invest in similar assets and they’ll wait for those listed vehicles to get to a really good price, and then they’ll invest significant amounts of money there. The advantage they have there is that they’re investing at a low price and have had great success in getting really good returns from that.

UniSuper has a model which is in some ways more like the retail funds and more focused on listed assets rather than a lot of unlisted assets. But their performance has been outstanding for a long period of time. Over almost every period they’re in the top five performers of investments.

UniSuper has a really strong advice offering as well. One of the advantages they have is that they’re in a fairly small number of locations across Australia, or indeed their members are in a fairly small number of locations – all the universities across Australia.

Therefore they can put their staff in those universities and their advisers in those universities. So it makes it really easy for members to get access to the full range of advice – whether it’s general advice, just got a few questions, or whether it’s a full financial plan. A university member doesn’t have to go and find an adviser to help them. Their advisers are right there in the workplace.

Sunsuper has won Super Fund of the Year a number of times in recent years and, this year, once again, they were very close. But this year they just missed out. Sunsuper has a very strong investment model. Their focus in terms of listed assets is more focused on a lot of passive investment, investing in line with the market, and then some strong high conviction managers around that. But in terms of where they get most bang for their buck in terms of fees and also their risk budget is in their unlisted assets.

So similar to AustralianSuper, they invest a lot in unlisted assets all around the world. They’ve partnered with some of the best managers in terms of private equity and infrastructure around the world. And they have also done a lot in property both here and around Australia. Sunsuper once again has the scale. So they don’t have to go into a fund, but they can co-invest with a big manager or even go direct for some investments.

The other area where Sunsuper is very strong is member services, and indeed Sunsuper has won our member services award for several years in a row now. What Sunsuper does really well is, like we talked about with AustralianSuper, they corral all the information that they have about members. And then they work out based on what they know about each of these members, what is the thing that is going to make the most difference to their retirement outcome. And once they’ve worked that out, they communicate that to members through a range of different channels. They might put out a message, for example, to consider salary sacrificing. But that message won’t just be on an email the member gets. That message will also be if they call the contact centre, there will be a prompt to talk to them about that issue. That message will also pop up on member online.

So what they’re doing there is identifying what the member could be doing to most improve their retirement goals. And they’re communicating that in a consistent way across multiple channels. And the results have been outstanding in terms of the engagement and members taking action.

And one of the reasons why the engagement has been so strong is that they don’t just say, ‘here’s the message we’re going to send out’, but they package the message up in such a way that it’s really engaging. They might send a message out with some really strong and vivid words, but also images. They might send a message out which has a little widget so that members can say, well, what happens if I put this much money in, or that much money in. So to enable members to explore the ‘what ifs’. ‘What happens if I do this? What happens if I do that?’

Sunsuper, UniSuper and AustralianSuper are all very good funds, all very close to winning the top award. But this year we went for AustralianSuper.