Hostplus picked up five gongs at the independently-assessed Rainmaker SelectingSuper 2018 Awards in Melbourne this week, including Fund of The Year for its $37 billion industry fund.
The super fund, which has a strong presence in the hotel and hospitality sectors, won:
- Fund of the Year
- Best in Show – MySuper Product
- Best Long-term Performance
- Best MySuper Performance – Risk Weighted
- Best Performance – Fixed Interest
HESTA and AvSuper were the other super funds to win multiple awards. HESTA collected Best Millennial Super Product and the Investment Leadership Award. AvSuper won the Members’ Choice Award and board member Lawrie Cox was inducted into the SelectingSuper Hall of Fame after being presented with the Industry Service Award.
Receiving the Fund of The Year award, Hostplus group executive retirement solutions and advice, Paul Watson, said it recognised an enormous amount of work from a passionate team who understand what the fund is about and can deliver outcomes to members.
“Particularly when there’s a lot of criticism around financial services and our industry, this is affirmation of the work we do – it’s the reason we get out of bed in the morning and it makes a real difference to many working Australians in achieving a dignified retirement,” Watson said.
Rainmaker’s Executive Director of Research and Compliance, Alex Dunnin, said: “The sole purpose of a superannuation fund is to help prepare its members for retirement by delivering strong and consistent investment returns, reasonable fees, as well as providing appropriate and affordable insurance cover along the way.
“Against these key areas, Hostplus has repeatedly shown itself to be Australia’s top performing default super fund and is regularly among the top performers across most of the personal and retirement segments in which it competes.
“Driving this is consistently impressive investment performance in the flagship asset classes of equities and bonds, which it supplements with innovative investments in private equity and unlisted infrastructure.
“Hostplus also has a reputation for product development and innovation – in particular, among low-cost indexed products for its personal members, which incidentally, are also strong performers,” Mr Dunnin said.
Hostplus CEO, David Elia, said these awards were a positive affirmation of the industry fund’s focus on delivering value to its members.
“In celebrating our 30th anniversary since the fund’s inception,” said Elia, “2018 has been an important opportunity for our team to reflect on our proud industry fund heritage and the strong member outcomes we have been able to achieve through growth and scale.”
“Our Board and leadership team have guided us to help over 1.1 million Australians keep their super savings safe and prosperous, in a top-performing fund, so they can retire with more. We do not take the privilege of this role lightly,” concluded Elia.
Speaking more broadly about the state of the super industry, Dunnin said: “Not enough funds are delivering the returns they should. The growing narrative is not that we place too much emphasis on outcomes, but that we place too little on outcomes. The paradox, thanks to weak competition regulation in financial services is that low performing funds don’t just survive, they thrive.
“It’s so perverse that if the regulator wanted to boot poor performing ‘mutt’ funds out of the industry, the law as it stands doesn’t let them.”
He added Australia’s best super funds routinely earn more than double what the worst performers deliver and recommended members check whether their fund is still the right one for them at least once a year.