Did you know…What's a master trust?
What’s in a master trust? Quite a bit, if you believe most of the hype written about them.
What’s in a master trust? Quite a bit, if you believe most of the hype written about them.
Yet many in the industry are still at a loss to explain just what these investment ve-hicles are. Definitions of master trusts vary from research house to research house, as the September quarter figures from research houses Assirt and Plan For Life il-lustrate.
According to Assirt, the biggest discretionary master trust in the country last Sep-tember was Asgard, with just under $6.2 billion under management. In fact, Asgard enjoyed a market share of just under a fifth of the entire master fund market.
Plan For Life begs to differ. Asgard was ranked the third largest master fund for the same quarter, even though the two research houses estimate its funds under management as roughly the same.
According to Plan For Life, AMP Life took the largest master fund honours in September, with more than $9.9 billion under management. This is more than dou-ble the figure quoted in Assirts research (just under $4.3 billion).
Second largest was MLC, with Plan For Life listing their funds under management at over $9.3 billion. Yet Assirt only ranks one MLC-owned master trust, FlexiPlan, as having about $1.9 billion under management.
While the industry works on a standard definition of master trusts (Morningstar and Plan For Life have been talking on this for some months), it seems the research data published is increasingly running the risk of becoming confusing, or perhaps even meaningless, to investors.
Top 5 Master Trusts ($ billion) Sept 1999
Plan For Life Assirt
1. AMP Life 9.91 1. Asgard 6.19
2. MLC 9.30 2. AMP Life 4.26
3. Asgard 6.19 3. Navigator 4.25
4. Westpac Life 4.31 4. Westpac 3.57
5. Norwich 4.25 5. Colonial 2.89
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