The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has revealed that five funds have failed to meet the benchmark of its second MySuper performance test.
APRA assessed 69 MySuper products with at least five years of performance history against an objective benchmark that assesses two components: investment performance and fees & costs.
In total five funds failed to meet the objective benchmark, including four that failed for the second time.
The new addition to the list was Westpac Group Plan MySuper, which joined second time failers Australian Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund’s LifetimeOne, EISS Super’s MySuper – Balanced, BT Super’s MySuper and AMG Super.
APRA member Margaret Cole said the overall results highlighted the improved outcomes which have been achieved for superannuation members over the last 12 months.
“Pleasingly, almost 96% of MySuper superannuation members are now in a performing MySuper product, equating to 13.1 million member accounts,” said Cole.
“Equally positive is that the performance test has contributed to over 5.1 million MySuper members (just over 38%) now paying lower fees than they were last year.”
APRA said trustees of the product that failed for the first time – Westpac Group Plan MySuper – will notify their members of the result by 28 September 2022.
The four products that failed the test for a second time are now closed to new members. Of those four products, three were offered by trustees with plans to exit the industry.
Cole said plans were well underway for the over 500,000 members of those three products to transfer to new MySuper products before the 2023 performance test.
“APRA will be engaging with these trustees to ensure that members achieve better outcomes as quickly and safely as possible,” she said.
APRA’s annual performance test was introduced last year to protect members from poor outcomes and hold trustees accountable for the implementation of their investment strategy.
The test assesses products’ long-term performance against a clear and objective benchmark tailored to each product’s asset allocation. In 2021, 13 MySuper products failed the test of which four have since exited.
